I'm going to be shooting a xmas party Fri night. The organizers requested some old Hollywood-type portraits of the couples in black and white. I will be using a Rebel Xti and a Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM.

They don't want me to do any work on the photos. Just shoot em, burn em onto a CD at the end of the party, and give me a check. Based upon tests here in my house, it looks like I can get a fairly decent old-style B&W look with the monochrome picture style with no extra lighting beside the onboard flash. But I have a question.

Is there any way to create a custom picture style using the Portrait style as a starting point, and the only change being to monochrome? Yes, I know only lazy people and newbies use the picture styles, so please don't jump me about that. But since I am not doing any post work on the photos, I would like to get a portrait look, with the monochrome coloring. Would the monochrome style give me a semi-portrait look? The sharpness setting for portrait and monochrome are identical in the settings.

Any advice? Thanks for anything you can think of.

I am not totally up to speed with digital photography so I am not familiar with your equipment, but, if you haven't considered this already, do you have/use lens filters that you can play around with... might yield something that works for you... just an idea.