Colour vs B&W

Which do you shoot most (film or final post-processing version)?

  • Colour

    Votes: 13 65.0%

  • B&W

    Votes: 7 35.0%
  • Total voters
    20
lindsay

lindsay

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Lindsay
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Just wondering what people prefer to end up having in a final image, either by shooting deliberately or after PP. I'm finding that B&W is my preferred starting point more and more in both film and digital, but maybe that's because my preferred genres are abstract, architecture and landscape, where I'm concentrating on shape, texture and contrast?
 
I can see no point in shooting B+W film other than the obvious cost saving.
Given I have a hybrid workflow, it's easy enough to convert digitised colour pictures into B+W.
 
If I shot film I'd shoot high contrast mono and some kind of heavily saturated colour. As I shoot digital, I tend to go with what feels best for the image, but I really like to desaturate most of my images.
 
Back in the day, when I used film, my photography was in monochrome. I had a darkroom where I could develop and print my photographs. My semi professional work was in B&W because that is what newspapers and magazines, mostly wanted. I also liked the aesthetic of B&W photography.

With digital I work only with colour. I tend to think of B&W being a thing of the past now that colour photogrphy with digital is much easier. My personal opinion is that making B&W images from a colour sensor is a bit artificiale.

Just my personal opinions of course.
 
I'll have to sit on the fence with this one as I like both.

Mostly, I suppose I'd have to say colour as it's the one I shoot the most of, but B&W (especially film) gives something that colour can't.

I'll only ever convert a digital image to mono if I find the colour one boring or lacking in something - in this case it can often be 'brought back' by removing the colour.
 
Black & white for me. Probably because I'm not very good with colour.

And film because I have only recently found a decent plugin that emulates the colour sensetivity of traditional black & white film. And it's still not quite there in terms of emulating the look of some of my favourites (Double-X, Washi-S) whereas for cases where I'd use HP5 or Tri-X it's pretty good.

The only time I tend to shoot colour is when the colour is important to the image.
 
Colour for me, although I do occasionally convert to mono. MUCH easier to go from colour to mono than to try to colourise mono...
 
I shot B&W film for years, and I can still "see" in B&W and know what will work or wont in it (9 times of of 10). I dont use film any more but still have all my gear.
With digital, I have some cameras (5d4 etc) set up with a in cameras B&W on the custom setting button? (or whatever it's called) Just turn dial to C2 and I have a B&W with orange filter set (C1 is set for HDR) That way I can get a quick B&W if the mood takes me, which it often does if I'm honest, no playing in the picture styles menu every time.
 
I just leave my camera in the default Raw settings but I definitely have an idea if I'm shooting specifically for Black and White a lot of the time. I know a lot of people hate the midday sun but I love going out to shot harsh and contrasty city photos at that time of day.
 
I used to think that B&W sucked the life out of photos, right up until I looked closely at the street shots of a photographer I met, and then I finally understood it (I think...). Now I take far more B&W than colour, and far more street photography than anything else.
 
I tend towards mono because it simplifies the image, but will happily use colour if appropriate for the picture. When I have shot film in the last few years it's always been mono - colour film doesn't really have any special qualities once digitised, but mono has its own rendering and a pleasing grain that's hard to synthesise well.

With digital I would ALWAYS want to start with the colour raw file - a mono raw image would be desperately limited.
 
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I like both mediums.
I feel many natural features are captured well with Colour such as flowers, sunsets, creatures especially with contrasting colours.
B&W I like the way it brings textures alive and can make landscapes more moody and dramatic.

Horses for courses
 
Predominantly colour (99%), I keep telling myself I like B&W but always end up prefer the colour edit :LOL:
 
Every so often, I'll drop the colour out of an image. It all depends on whether I think it enhances the picture.
 
Colour for digital, and B&W for film because it's more readily available.
I don't do any PP, so if I did B&W on digital I'd just set it in the camera.
 
Very occasionally do I think and image should be B&W whilst taking an image, but would always shoot colour RAW regardless. The B&W Mixer option in Adobe Camera Raw gives a lot of control over the underlying colours of the B&W image, to alter the contrast of areas of the image depending on what the colour was. Much more options than just an orange or red filter with B&W film, which for most was a global effect the user had little to no control of post capture.

Choosing B&W ex post facto, depends on the image. :thinking: Sometimes an image just jumps out as being B&W, sometimes being mono can simplify the image, sometimes there is a dominant colour which is distracting from the subject. Or something else. :LOL:

I also still have the free Nik Collection in Photoshop, and Silver Efex Pro2 plugin has a lot of presets which change a lot of settings other than the underlying colours, which can give very dramatic results. I rarely use them though, mainly because I would like to take more control myself.

A couple of months ago I went to Porto in Portugal, and of the images I thought were the nicest, a lot ended up being B&W, which surprised me from such a colourful city. I would not have thought that would have been the case whilst I was there taking the pics. :oops: :$ Though there was one which I thought at the time, this will be B&W because it was an abstract view from above of people, and I just wanted the figures and their shadows.
 
Often I will shoot in B&W (jpeg) as I think I can see light better through the viewfinder/LCD but I tend to also record RAW so I can choose colour if I want to.
I have times when I prefer the look of B&W and then times when I think colour brings out the 'message' or character of the scene.
I don't think I could be happy with one of the new B&W only cameras. :)
 
I do both
Black and white for the darkroom wet printing mainly because colour large format film is tres expensive and there is no where to wet print it

Digital I use black and white to help see where the light is falling in the studio and then make it colour if it fits
 
gramps said:
Often I will shoot in B&W (jpeg) as I think I can see light better through the viewfinder/LCD but I tend to also record RAW so I can choose colour if I want to.
I have times when I prefer the look of B&W and then times when I think colour brings out the 'message' or character of the scene.
I don't think I could be happy with one of the new B&W only cameras. :)
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Interesting point which was also made in a recent Nikon School online course - shoot in Raw plus JPEG, with the camera set to use Picture Control or Canon equivalent to produce the Jpeg in B&W.
I do actually have the Pentax K3iiiMono, and love using it but then I have a thing about b&w anyway, but I've set my D850 up to do as I said above so that I have the options when I use that.
 
redhed17 said:
Very occasionally do I think and image should be B&W whilst taking an image, but would always shoot colour RAW regardless. The B&W Mixer option in Adobe Camera Raw gives a lot of control over the underlying colours of the B&W image, to alter the contrast of areas of the image depending on what the colour was. Much more options than just an orange or red filter with B&W film, which for most was a global effect the user had little to no control of post capture.

Choosing B&W ex post facto, depends on the image. :thinking: Sometimes an image just jumps out as being B&W, sometimes being mono can simplify the image, sometimes there is a dominant colour which is distracting from the subject. Or something else. :LOL:

I also still have the free Nik Collection in Photoshop, and Silver Efex Pro2 plugin has a lot of presets which change a lot of settings other than the underlying colours, which can give very dramatic results. I rarely use them though, mainly because I would like to take more control myself.
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This is pretty much in accord with how I do it. Normally I use a combination of a colour mixer adjustment and a tone curve adjustment - the more control the better over what is not just a superficial aesthetic, but the underlying message of the image. But I never feel the urge to go faking film grain or anything like that ... ;-)
 
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lindsay said:
Just wondering what people prefer to end up having in a final image, either by shooting deliberately or after PP. I'm finding that B&W is my preferred starting point more and more in both film and digital, but maybe that's because my preferred genres are abstract, architecture and landscape, where I'm concentrating on shape, texture and contrast?
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Have I read the question different to quite a few others? I didn't think the OP was asking of you prefer color or BW .. I think the op was asking if you prefer to produce BW by in camera or colour then PP to BW ..how you get to BW .... I think colour then PP BW so you ahve both :)
 
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@KIPAX I think I was asking the question as you interpreted it, but I've now confused myself! Yes, I like to make a choice up front about which approach to take, which is obligatory with film but optional in digital -= however as I've now got a Mono digital camera, I tend to choose to use that sometimes and on other occasions take a different digital camera that affords me a choice, but on those occasions I may, as I've done with the D850, shoot both Raw and a Mono Jpeg.
 
I do colour but there's no denying that some pictures look very nice in B&W. I'm not happy with my conversions but I try.
 
Colour generally is a more literal medium. I sometimes find that a colour image, though well focussed, exposed & framed, fails to gel into anything worthwhile, whilst a mono conversion might provide a meaningful extraction that I hadn't pre-visualised through the viewfinder.
 
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Oops! Answering the original question, I find it difficult to 'see in B&W' so I tend to shoot a B&W jpeg plus a raw just in case. It's very rare for me to abandon the B&W and go with colour developed from the raw version, but it does happen the other way round occasionally. And more often than not, if I'm converting from colour to B&W, it will be from a jpg version as I like to try to emulate an impressionistic, old-fashioned film look.
 
Mostly colour with an occasional deliberate shot to be converted to monochrome. However on a recent workshop in Blackpool I shot all in raw (DNG) and blanket converted to monochrome, surprisingly I preferred them
 
lindsay said:
however as I've now got a Mono digital camera,
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I think this is the interesting discussion. If there was as much choice for mono cameras as there was colour, I wonder if there would be more varied responses. To most people, it would seem a no brainer to shoot in colour then convert later. I wonder if it boils down to some (a minority) who prefer the challenge of being forced to use black & white (i.e. you loaded black & white into the camera and thus that's all you have) vs those who prefer the flexibility of having both (i.e. shoot colour then convert later if you want to).

I have challenged students in the past to shoot in a B&W preset on their camera, in jpeg only (thus never having the colour version), for a month. Not one person ever took it up. Plenty thought it was a cool idea though.

I fear the discussion of whether limitations force creativity is for another post though!
 
Roughly 50/50 at the moment, I think. For me it depends entirely on what you are photographing. Colour can be too busy sometimes and obscure detail.
 
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