Hdr + B&w

[Gemok]

Hey guys had a thought bugging me all day
Would a HDR image have more contrast than a a normal image of the same scene and so make a potentially better B&W shot?

 

[CT]

erm..

HDR works by compressing the tonal range in an image so that it can show a greater range of tones, or handle a bigger luminosity range than either film or sensors are capable of resolving without burned out highlights or blocked up shadows. In compressing that tonal range we must reduce the contrast?

A monochrome shot doesn't have to be contrasty to be good though, in fact it's not usually considered desirable. Ansell Adams and a gazillion other photographers have looked for black at one end of the scale, white at the other, and a nice even range of tones in between, and that would seem to indicate that the HDR image is a good candidate for mono conversion.

Short answer, I dunno, it depends.

 

[Dave]

I tried to do just that recently.

It definitely helped to fix some of the problems with the original image.

 

[SammyC]

There's no reason why HDR wouldn't work on a mono image.

 

[petemc]

It works very well.

 

[Warspite]

Looks great in Petes shot, really gives it a gritty, utopian look

 

[DJW]

A fair portion of the B&W processes I use try to increase the range of tones, so if you can do it up front in colour with HDR, then why not