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Monochrome or Colour??


robertsimpsonnorth

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I tend to lean towards monochrome more often than colour. Most of the time I will process it colour and make virtual copy in mono. That is where I tend to decide which way to go. Must be that 15 years I spent shooting film and hiding in B&W darkroom back in the 70s and 80s. I've attached a photo done in both. I am divided on which I favour.

 

Shot on October 31st. Partially cloudy to overcast day around 2:30pm Nikon D5300, 10-20mm AF-P lens at 16mm (24mmFX). Edited in LR. Exported to PS. Saved. Further edits in LR, one in colour, one monochrome. This what I got.

 

North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton, Alberta

 

Trouble uploading Colour - will do in next post

 

2014979734_River-Monochrome-3.thumb.jpg.0b2bdf56001ff1b383e1bab44abab27c.jpg

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I think the B&W jpegs straight from the camera have advanced to the point where the advantages outweigh any perceived disadvantages. With a mirrorless camera, you can see how the finished product will look or underexpose/overexpose as you see fit. Also, you start thinking in B&W in the present and not about how or if you are going to convert the photo from color to B&W.
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In the film days, I always found that I had a lot of difficulty shooting color and black and white simultaneously (with 2 cameras). I had to sort of get into the spirit of black and white. To some extent now, if I shoot in RAW and convert later, getting a good black and white is something of a fluke, not something I "intended." I'm thinking (maybe wrongly) that specifying monochrome in the camera (something some cameras can do -- one of mine can) which causes the digital image on the camera to be black and white helps me to look for good black and white subjects, even if when you get back to the computer, the black and white jpegs embedded with the raw get converted back to color. Course I can only do this if I set it to RAW + Jpeg so while the RAWs revert, the jpegs stay black and white.

 

Course it would be even better if you could just dial in a color filter into the menu (something you can do with the raw in post processing). I can't personally do this in camera. You could also use a real filter but then the raw would be somewhat useless except for black and white.

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I shoot in RAW as well. I do sometimes go out with a black and white mind set or what I'm shooting puts me in that mind set and I definitely like the flexibility of being able to do my own conversion, assigning tonal values to the different colors as I convert. Sometimes, I don't know when I'm shooting whether I'll convert or not, but most of the time, as I'm in the moment, I have a sense of what I'm going to do with it. When I shoot something I know will be kept in color, it's usually because the color of the scene or subject suggests itself immediately as part of the eventual vision. Other scenes and conditions just seem to lend themselves to black and white. I love the ability to convert to black and white and the range of possibility and aesthetic choice it provides.
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Robert, it may not be a matter of preferring one of your versions over the other. I'd decide which to use based on the context. If you're going to hang it, which would look better in the room and under the lighting conditions you have? If you're going to display it, what other photos will it be shown with? We tend to think in black and white terms (pun intended) when it comes things like this. Binary. Which one? It may be that each has its attributes which will best be in evidence depending on the use and situation.
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There’s always something new under the sun.
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I tend to lean towards monochrome more often than colour. Most of the time I will process it colour and make virtual copy in mono. That is where I tend to decide which way to go. Must be that 15 years I spent shooting film and hiding in B&W darkroom back in the 70s and 80s. I've attached a photo done in both. I am divided on which I favour.

 

Shot on October 31st. Partially cloudy to overcast day around 2:30pm Nikon D5300, 10-20mm AF-P lens at 16mm (24mmFX). Edited in LR. Exported to PS. Saved. Further edits in LR, one in colour, one monochrome. This what I got.

 

North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton, Alberta

 

Trouble uploading Colour - will do in next post

 

[ATTACH=full]1270317[/ATTACH]

 

I prefer the color version compared between the two, although your sky looks a bit darker than I would expect. I prefer the color version because the black and white does not have much separation in gray shades. Everything looks to be the same shade of grey which makes the scene look flat. You might want to experiment with color filters to introduce contrast between the vegetation vs the water/sky. The colors that give contrast in these two regions are yellow vs blue/cyan. So, a yellow or red filter might bring out the contrast.

 

I took the liberty (hope you don't mind) to play with your image to show what I had in mind. Its attached below.

 

Untitled-874.thumb.jpg.f709d87206d2831540fd13bd9f3c5917.jpg

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I shoot both digital and film, but tend to only use film with B&W emulsions. Consequently, I tend to leave the house either with a film camera intent on B&W images, or digital for colour, and I think this is the way I get the best images. I do occasionally see a colour image that I think might convert to B&W quite well, and half that time it might, but more often than not, if I didn’t see it as a B&W image to begin with, it doesn’t make a good one in reality. I think good B&W images typically are those that (excuse me if I am stating the bleedin’ obvious here), don’t rely on colour. This is the call I make each time I shoot with B&W ; ‘does part of this scene rely on colour for its impact?’ If yes, I don’t make the shot.

 

I think this image might be one of those. Personally, I prefer the original colour shot, but I might be tempted to wind down on the vibrancy and contrast a tad, but I share the frustration of the conversion process.

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I am not that deft with PS. I did work with it for a few years after I took some continuing learning courses at a polytechnic college and I had a student copy of Photoshop 5. Stopped for a few years. Used a different editing program once I got started again. Have been using LR/PS cc for the last 1.5 years - >90% of the time with LR. I tried working on a couple versions of the photo in PS, but not getting what I wanted - a lot more practice needed. Did the attached with LR. Getting there, but still not where I want it. Split Toning used to tint.

 

Note: Original was low contrast. Mostly overcast day (which I like). File was 14 bit raw

 

1616182849_Riveredit2-2.jpg.c0edda755393ee8ee12c294e45f02fc6.jpg

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@Supriyo - I like what you have done with it. I assume you did this in Photoshop. I do at least 90% of my work in Lightroom. I have been using Photoshop to fix things I can't fix in Lightroom or saving it in Photoshop so I can go back into Lightroom for a fresh set of adjustments.

 

Hi Robertsimpsonnorth,

I also prefer to use Lightroom for most editing needs since it takes less space to save multiple edits, and histories can be undone. In some cases, I have to resort to Silver Efex to achieve a particular look that I want. I haven't yet figured out how to emulate all the effects of the Silver Efex plugin using the LR settings only (Silver Efex can be used as a plugin from LR, but the resultant image is saved as a tiff, and the settings are not saved).

 

Your last edit looks better to my eyes than the original post, with more contrast and definition in the vegetation, for example.

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  • 1 month later...
Hi Robertsimpsonnorth,

I also prefer to use Lightroom for most editing needs since it takes less space to save multiple edits, and histories can be undone. In some cases, I have to resort to Silver Efex to achieve a particular look that I want. I haven't yet figured out how to emulate all the effects of the Silver Efex plugin using the LR settings only (Silver Efex can be used as a plugin from LR, but the resultant image is saved as a tiff, and the settings are not saved). Xender Discord Omegle

 

Your last edit looks better to my eyes than the original post, with more contrast and definition in the vegetation, for example.

In the film days, I always found that I had a lot of difficulty shooting color and black and white simultaneously (with 2 cameras). I had to sort of get into the spirit of black and white. To some extent now, if I shoot in RAW and convert later, getting a good black and white is something of a fluke, not something I "intended." I'm thinking (maybe wrongly) that specifying monochrome in the camera (something some cameras can do -- one of mine can) which causes the digital image on the camera to be black and white helps me to look for good black and white subjects, even if when you get back to the computer, the black and white jpegs embedded with the raw get converted back to color. Course I can only do this if I set it to RAW + Jpeg so while the RAWs revert, the jpegs stay black and white.

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In the film days, I always found that I had a lot of difficulty shooting color and black and white simultaneously (with 2 cameras). I had to sort of get into the spirit of black and white. To some extent now, if I shoot in RAW and convert later, getting a good black and white is something of a fluke, not something I "intended." I'm thinking (maybe wrongly) that specifying monochrome in the camera (something some cameras can do -- one of mine can) which causes the digital image on the camera to be black and white helps me to look for good black and white subjects, even if when you get back to the computer, the black and white jpegs embedded with the raw get converted back to color. Course I can only do this if I set it to RAW + Jpeg so while the RAWs revert, the jpegs stay black and white.

 

Thank you for sharing your experience. While I do sometimes shoot with predominantly black and white in mind (That generally triggers by looking at a subject), I usually shoot with more general principles in mind that can be interchangeably applied to both color and black and white. Those principles, in my opinion are prominent shapes, textures, harmony of composition and light and most importantly whether the picture conveys anything special/specific about the subject. I do understand your point and motivation in shooting with black and white or color in mind. For instance, if I knew I would deliberately use BW, I would not worry about harmony of colors in my scene, whereas if the final image would be in color, I would adjust my composition to avoid distracting colors. I usually shoot with color in mind, and some of that turn out to be good black and whites at the end. I also think, given the small size of the viewfinder, it is not always a fool-proof judgement to decide whether something will work better in color vs BW while shooting, and that post processing can yield surprises, opposite of what I expected at the time of shooting.

 

I have tried shooting with the monochrome setting in the camera, where the viewfinder image will appear in BW, not color. This does help to get into a certain mood to some extent, but at the end, most of my black and white conversions involve so much filters and tweaking in software, that the final image hardly resembles in tonality to the one shown in the viewfinder. So, I don't do it as a general practice (shoot with monochrome setting), but still think it would be fun to do so at times.

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In a scene, such as the one above, where colour plays a minimal role, B&W can often present a much more appealing image. In your instance the B&W is much more appealing. My general preference for fall landscapes is colour for the simple reason that I am trying to capture the best fall colour that I can. For me this is also generally true for spring and summer as well. In the winter I estimate that at least half of my images I end up converting from RAW into B&W for the simple reason that I am trying to enhance what is already a black and white image.
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