Shooting in Monochrome

[Krayon]

Hey.

I've got to do a concept in monochrome for school and was just wondering if anyone had any tips for shooting in monochrome for me? Anything from colour to exposure would be helpful to know.

Here's something i've done already;


Kitty by Sheeeps, on Flickr

 

[kokakaste2]

Monochrome as B&W film or digital? If digital then I guess best is to shoot RAW (colour) and edit the shot in Photoshop/Lightroom.

 

[bfotosuk]

with digi always shoot in color, you can change it to b&w on the comp

 

[Alastair]

Monochrome as B&W film or digital? If digital then I guess best is to shoot RAW (colour) and edit the shot in Photoshop/Lightroom.

with digi always shoot in color, you can change it to b&w on the comp

+1

Shoot RAW and process into b&w in Lightroom or similar. Don't just push the "b&w" button, explore what you can achieve by adjusting the individual colour channels within the conversion.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

I've always thought that although you can shoot anything in monochrome, not everything works well in monochrome, although I'd caveat that by saying, it depends on how you shoot it, and how you process it. Maybe its because I've got some wet darkroom experience, but if converting to black and white digitally, I always make contrast and selective tonal adjustments.

I had some advice which was to start shooting textures, shapes and explore the interplay of light and shadow, etc, which is a good start.

 

[paulefox]

nice pic

 

[fixedimage]

I shoot a lot of monochrome digital stuff.
If I imagine the final result will be a b&w image then I shoot raw (if I can) and set camera to black and white or monochrome mode.
That way you get a b&w preview on the camera screen so you can get an idea of what your doing but you get the full colour raw file to work with when you get home.
This is especially useful if you're using a camera where the screen is the viewfinder, it lets you see in B&W so to speak.

 

[artyman]

You are lloking for a good range of tonal values, for example whilst a row of brightly coloured beach huts may have impact in colour, when in B&W they may all be similar shades of grey, so you need to look around you in B&W so to speak, and find variations in tonal values.

You might find this webpage helpful. http://www.artyman.adsl24.co.uk/wip/lesson3.html

 

[specialman]

Tonal range is king when looking at B&W but it's a paradox; the camera is recording the mono image (if you set it that way) yet you're looking at the world in colour.... kind of takes getting used to and sometimes it's just pure luck.

I tend to shoot raw but have the colour mode on my camera set to B&W so I can instantly see what effect I'm getting on the LCD, as a rough guide anyway.... then I have a raw image to fall back on to make tweaks to and even revert back to colour if required.

 

[AJQS]

Generally anything contrasty will come out pretty well in B&W. Everybody like B&W different though, I personally Like it dark and contrasty, some like it smooth with plenty of midtones.

In certain conversions, it's possible for B&W to smooth skin quite dramatically too, so watch for that!

If you really want contrast, shoot with an Infra Red filter, now that is Contrasty!