Black and white ONLY!

AndyWest

AndyWest

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Hi

Does anyone here shoot just in black and white? I have been thinking about it for a real long time. I'm going away on holiday to france in a few weeks time and as was thinking of doing a project of 1 camera, 1 prime lens, shoot black and white only on Jpg Large Fine. I love Mono and it got me thinking about just shooting like this permanently.

Anyone else shoot only or near enough only in Mono? Do you always shoot RAW then convert or shoot Jpg and hope there is enough information there to get a good exposure.

I have the PEN-f which has loads of great mono customisation so probably the best tool for the job although I'm rather partial to Panasonic's Dynamic Monochrome.
 
To all intents and purposes, I'm black and white only. At least, all my "serious" as opposed to record and holiday snaps are black and white. On the other hand, since I use 5x4 film (and sometimes 120 film) my practices aren't relevant :D

Edit to add: it's more difficult to produce a black and white if you start from jpg as the format is only 8 bits.
 
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I know a great photographer who (almost) only shoots B & W, he discovered early on his photographic journey that his colour blindness meant he would never be able to process colour accurately.

But he's brilliant in B&W
 
My cousins lad as he got into photography went to B&W via the film route and latterly digitally by getting the Leica model that only shoots in that mode i.e. there is no colour recorded (cannot recall the model number)

It does suit his style of documentary photography to record the Unseen Oxford amongst other projects
 
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Harrison cameras have a nice used Leica Monochrome. Stick a 35 or 50 on it and happy days!
 
regfinch said:
If you shoot in Raw the colour information is still there if you need it.
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This is very true and really tempting to go this route but you couldn't with film so for this holiday I should shoot Jpg.

A leica monochrome would be bad ass!!!
 
This thread in F&C has some points that you should I think be aware of. The thread was about the best starting point for black and white landscapes, and there is discussion (obviously) that is related solely to film, and therefore not of concern to you. What is - in view of your post #8 above - is the stuff I put in there about the advantages of colour as a starting point, particularly if you aren't fully conversant with the pitfalls of black and white. Although I've been a B&W photographer for many years, I can still get caught out, and the photo of the boat at Naburn locks in that thread may give you food for thought. As well as a number of my other illustrated posts...
 
Thanks for the reply Stephen.

I do understand the huge benefits of shooting in RAW and converting the image from that format. I was going for a more artistic viewpoint which is something I did not make clear at the start so my bad! :) I was thinking more about composition and getting interesting shots rather than the technical side.

After my holiday I will probably go back to shooting raw but convert in Lightroom.

So do you think it's better to print from Tiff files?
 
Oddly enough, I was thinking more of the artistic side when I was pointing you towards raw. Obviously, I'm slightly to one side of you since I use film for black and white; and I'm definitely biased by my experiences with an Olympus E3 (my wife's) where blown highlights were the order of the day. I never experienced blown highlights until I used digital, and I became very mindfull of the greater opportunities to recover from raw.

My biggest objection to jpg though is that it's both lossy and 8 bit. If you arrive at a black and white jpg by Photoshop's convert to greyscale, you have only 256 different tonal values available. We can distinguish 250 (or thereabouts) different shades of grey. BUT - that 250 is a moveable scale, depending on the lighting on the print. Hence, we need more than 250 tones if we want to have the print in variable lighting. And more still to the point, it's well nigh impossible to produce an artistic black and white with any degree of personal expression without adjusting the tonal range with the equivalent of levels or curves. And if we start to do this and expand/compress the tonal range, the histogram will gain gaps and we'll lose some of the 256 different tones. The result may still look fine, but the real question is how it would look if laid side by side with a more fully toned version.

The lossy nature of jpg means something gets lost every time you save. In my tests, 6 save made it noticeably worse on my monitor. This could mean that you only want to save once, and it makes reworking an image more difficult if after you've lived with it for a week you spot changes that would improve it. Personally, I like to review a print after a week or so because it's easier to be objective if you haven't just been working hard on it.

I don't know if the in camera mono mode works in the same way as Photoshop, possibly you could test it.

Just to reiterate - my comments are based on the artistic implications, because (in my opinion) all technical considerations have a value because they impact the artistry. You can't really separate the two strands. I'll accept the "interesting shots" but I've had my fair share of them when I started, and then found that they could have been so much more if I had been able to take them a step further - a step I couldn't take for purely technical reasons!
 
Done it on a Panasonic GH1, complete with red filter, it was when I was starting out in B&W film work and it really helped me get to grips with how colour filters affect the B&W outcome.

Here's one...

Porth Y Nant by Alan Jones, on Flickr
 
Many manufacturers apply in-camera processing/sharpening to jpegs. If you need to manipulate the images afterwards, artifacts tend to show up sooner - halos, noise etc
 
For b&w you are far better shooting colour raw, converting to b&w then processing, as you'll still be able to tweak each and every colour channel and get a far richer, more contrasty image. There is a great book I read called "Advanced Black and White Digital Photography" by John Beardsworth thats worth reading.
 
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mr_pants said:
Not quite any camera, as far as I understand. Some shoot in RAW and B&W only.
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What do you mean? Any camera shooting full colour raws is what I'm referring to? You convert the full colour raw so you can tweak each colour channel as they still have values even in b&w.
 
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mr_pants said:
Full colour RAWs, yes. It's just that some cameras don't shoot colour at all. RAW or not.
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Yes, but not many :) I'm obviously talking in general terms. However, b&w raw files (say from a Leica M) do still give you the ability to adjust different channels in the physical colour spectrum, it's just they will be automatically "grey scaled" from capture.
 
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odd jim said:
Yes, but not many :) I'm obviously talking in general terms. However, b&w raw files (say from a Leica M) do still give you the ability to adjust different channels in the physical colour spectrum, it's just they will be automatically "grey scaled" from capture.
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I don't know how one could adjust the different colour channels from an M, as there is no colour information recorded at all. The only way that I could think of doing that would be to use a coloured filter at the time of exposure.

Have I missed something?
 
mr_pants said:
I don't know how one could adjust the different colour channels from an M, as there is no colour information recorded at all. The only way that I could think of doing that would be to use a coloured filter at the time of exposure.

Have I missed something?
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Actually you're right - I thought for some reason the colour spectrum was substituted to the corresponding greyscale and could still be adjusted but looking at the files in LR the HSL / Color / B&W section is greyed out with the M file. Which begs the question, as I can get potentially better b&w prints from my Canon 6d (for example) shooting full colour raw, converting and processing than the Leica M which doesn't give me that same processing lattitude, whats the point in the Leica M :LOL:?
 
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Yes i have shot many times in black and white for my wedding photography customers. check this out and give your feedback on this.
JADE%20%26%20TOM%20WALKER%20-210_GnxKgADWRuI2sf8Vytef-840x559.jpg
 
StephenM said:
The lossy nature of jpg means something gets lost every time you save. In my tests, 6 save made it noticeably worse on my monitor. This could mean that you only want to save once, and it makes reworking an image more difficult if after you've lived with it for a week you spot changes that would improve it. Personally, I like to review a print after a week or so because it's easier to be objective if you haven't just been working hard on it.
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Not quite the whole story. JPEGs will degrade but it takes a save - close - open cycle to do it, simply saving then continuing to edit the file shouldn't cause extra artefaction in the image. An easy work around is to do the first computer save as either a PhotoShop native file format (PSD) or as a TIFF before saving the final version in whatever format you desire.
 
I did a One Camera, One Lens, One Film exercise last year, for 6 months or so. Slight cheat because I swapped the Leitz Minolta CL for a Bessa R3A half way through, but the lens was the same (M-Rokkor 40mm f/2). Film was Kodak Tri-X so it was definitely black and white only. Results here. I thought it was a very valuable exercise that I greatly enjoyed. It certainly helped to get my "black and white eye" back (I started in all black and white, but had shot relatively little in the intervening years).
 
I can see the benefit of choosing to put limits on your photography in some ways and shoot only in B&W, but I wouldn't be being so rigid on an expensive holiday first. :thinking: ;)

I don't know about the OP but my holidays have taking pics as the core, and I wouldn't want to limit myself in such a way as to have to make the choice to abandon the plan if an amazing scene/opportunity happened. And if you choose to stick to the plan, would there be regret on the thing that was missed? If you abandon the plan would you feel that you have 'failed' yourself? The OP would have to wrestle with such dilemmas. ;)

If it were me, I would set the camera to B&W to get the feedback from the rear LCD or EVF as to how the scene looks in mono, and to help to get into the head space of what works better in B&W and what doesn't, but set the camera to RAW, just to give the most options for the final image. That doesn't have to mean you have to use the colour image, you can still limit yourself to only B&W. You can even set up a preset in LR or ACR so you never see the images in colour, so as not to tempt yourself from your chosen path. ;) But you have more information to fine tune the final image with the underlying colour data.

For most it is the final image that matters, few would care that whether the final image was B&W from the start or not. Is it a good image or not. :thinking: If it really matters to the individual Photographer that it was only ever B&W then they can stick to that if they want of course, but if that amazing sunset is in front of me I don't want to miss making the most of it in colour for a self imposed arbitrary rule, or feel that I have somehow failed if I decide to veer from the path.

If it makes you happy though, and that is the only person you have to please, do whatever makes you happy and gives you the most enjoyment. :)
 
Update to this thread.......

Well I completely and utterly failed in shooting just mono. I shot Raw and converted most of the images to mono in Lightroom when I got back. I am convinced that with my Olympus Pen-f and it's front dial for mono, I could be happy doing street in Jpg only. When I do shoot this ways I only have to do a little bit of post processing which is a nice change.

I am fully aware of the benefits of converting Raw to mono but the street stuff I like doing does not need that amount of editing. I like real rough mono street images which can be simply done in Jpg. Anything else in colour I will do in Raw.

The Leica monochrom is an amazing camera and I would dearly love to have one but the cost is way way out of my price range. The sigma cameras are the next best thing as they do not loose information like normal cameras plus there is shed loads of detail. I wish someone would make an affordable camera that worked on the same principle as the Leica. A simple non fussy aps-c or micro 4/3 camera with either a fixed 35mm or interchangeable system. For now the Pen-f will do just fine.
 
I've been shooting this holiday only in b/w with my PEN EP5. Only way I seem to be allowed to photograph my eldest. Mostly with the 17mm f1.8 but sometimes in the evenings my 25mm f1.4 came out. And a few with the 35-100 f2.8. Worked absolutely fine.
 
Raw and JPEG with the camera set to only show the B&W JPEGs when you show her the shots - you'll still have the colour versions in raw!
 
Nod said:
Raw and JPEG with the camera set to only show the B&W JPEGs when you show her the shots - you'll still have the colour versions in raw!
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Yup that is what I did. Well I think, haven't checked yet.
 
I suggest a huge colour print as her commercialmas gift!!! :D
 
Nod said:
Raw and JPEG with the camera set to only show the B&W JPEGs when you show her the shots - you'll still have the colour versions in raw!
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This is a sensible thing to do. I could do that for now and see if it's better for me to convert the raw files or to see if I'm happy with the JPG's. :)
 
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