BW film versus grey scale conversion

I am just a little more than a beginner, and I am wondering whether

there's any specific advantage in using a BW film compared to shoot

colour film and converting it to grayscale.

<br>Is there actually anything which gets "lost in translation",

anything which cannot be "simulated" with digital image processing?

 

<p>I have tried searching in the forums, but I couldn't quite find an

answer to this (trivial?) question, other than posts about how to best

perform the conversion with Photoshop.

 

<p>Thank you for any answer.

The only way to get the look of real b&w film is to use real b&w film. Clueless people will undoubtedly take issue with this statement, but one look at their prints will demonstrate my point.

There have been cases where I scanned a color negative and printed it both in color and B&W. I had photos of the same scene on B&W film. I have also printed color negatives on VC paper with good success. I don't see from my experience that one can make a blanket statement about the relative virtues of each approach. I recommend that one should try whatever comes to mind and be his own judge. I don't say his/her because most women I have met have already come to that conclusion.

I've done both and I'm leaning towards doing all my B&W on color negative film from

now on. I like that I can use all the colors to my advantage when doing the

conversion. With b&w film I need to pick a colored filter at the moment of exposure

which is much harder to finesse for me.

 

I have some samples (a couple with both the b&w and color version posted at the fuji

rangefinder pages. You can take a peek at them here:

 

http://fujirangefinder.com/user.php?id=441&page=user_images

 

Some b&w are shot with traditional b&w film as well to give you an idea.

My personal opinion is that I'll stick with traditional B&W film because of the control I've got in the exposure and processing. Also I've never really liked the way color neg films handle blacks, and high contrast scenes are difficult to capture well in slide film (though I prefer slide film for color work). Both situations are relativly easy to handle with traditional B&W, with a little experience. I also like traditional silver prints on fiber paper, and a color neg print (or a c-41 B&W neg to some extent) doesn't have quit the same look, not better or worse, just not my preferance. As was mentioned before, there are advantages to shooting in color if you're working B&W, like having the color information so you don't have to choose just the right filter when shooting, you can experiment in post-production. If you're going scan your negs and work digitally, and you're not going to get into E.I. testing, and development testing, compensated development times, etc, then shooting color and doing B&W digitally might not be a bad idea. I'd recomend giving both methods a good try (or maybe you already have to some extent), and see which suits you, you're subjet matter, and your working style best.

 

Peter

<I>Clueless people will undoubtedly take issue with this statement, but one look at their prints will demonstrate my point</i><P>Hey look, our first troll - doesn't have the courtesy of using a last name either. One only has to take a look at your portfolio to see the typical dull and murky work that results from this typical effete attitude. Are you aware that zone system has more than 5 zones of dull grey? More proof that fine art B/W is more self induced hype than substance. Another question: why is it that snobs who make these kind of statements always have B/W images with wall to wall grain in zone 4-5? What's up with that? <P>The only quantitative difference between shooting conventional B/W film and digital desaturation is the long density range of conventional B/W materials like Tri-X or HP5. Given the increased difficulties of processing conventional B/W films and the greater difficulties of scanning it I'm not a fan of B/W film for scanning unless it's medium format or larger. <P>By the way, the vast majority of monochrome fashion and commercial work you see in magazines and commercials is desaturated color film or digital. There are a few high profile photogs using conventional B/W, but the vast majority is desaturated chrome or digital. I challenge you to discredit the tonality of those images and produce something better.

Scott, thanks for providing a fine example of the "clueless" position I'd referred to.

 

And thanks for visiting and disliking my portfolio; if you'd liked it I would be gravely concerned.

Scott,

So your model of good tonal value is a tv commercial and magazine reproduction? Come on, you can do better than that.

Ignoring all the flaming, if you aren't sure what you'll want, and don't want to process your own, then by all means shoot in color and desaturate later if you want a B&W effect. You can add grain filters and other effects in software to make the image look very much as it it were shot on silver in the first place.

 

But if you know in advance you want black and white, and especially if you can manage the setup to process your own film (even just the negatives), by all means shoot on black and white film. There is a texture and tone with a good combination of film and developer that can't be duplicated with desaturated color, or even the C-41 process black and white films like XP-2. Black and white is more versatile -- Tri-X can be exposed and custom processed for any ISO from 100 to 3200 and produce good final prints, depending on your needs; T-Max 400 can also cover the same range, though the two films do different things well and work best in different developers -- and you have control of both the developing and, if you have a full darkroom, the printing process as well.

 

So, bottom line, I'd say if you just want some black and white images, desaturate scans from the film you're used to. If you want to learn what black and white is all about, and has been about for the past century and a half, shoot on black and white film and process it yourself.

Stefano, have you seen these two photo.net articles yet?

<p>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/digital/editing/bwconvert/">http://www.photo.net/digital/editing/bwconvert/</a>

<p>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/mjohnston/column21/">http://www.photo.net/mjohnston/column21/</a>

Thanks everybody, for the detailed explanations and the links.

<p>It looks to me that, unless I proceed with doing my own B&W development (i.e. set up a darkroom), there shouldn't be major differences between the two approaches in terms of results.

<p>Given that, the colour film seems to give me the most of the flexibility, provided that one has a Photoshop or similar.

<br>Since buying a Photoshop license is out of my budget, for the time being, I might try playing around with some free alternatives (e.g. GIMP) and verify the results.

I think only you can answer your own question.

I think there is an advantage to shooting b&w film and printing it on silver paper. But you can also get stunning results from shooting colour neg and de-saturating it and printing it via photoshop and ink-jet. Seek out some of the better examples of both and decide yourself if the silver route is worth the extra effort.

Also films like Ilford XP2 are capable of tremendous results in the darkroom particulary when used in circumstances and light that suits them.

Get a copy of photoshop elements, it's very cheap and rather good.

I would tend to agree with Beau in that B&W film has a very different (and imho

superior) look as opposed to desaturated color and the only way to truly achieve that

is by using B&W film. I can usually tell (even in jpeg format) whether or not an image

was made from B&W film or desaturated color. Granted, it does get harder and harder

to tell the difference the more Photo Shop (and photography in general) savvy the

photographer is, but in the end there is no way to duplicate the look of silver gelatin

prints from silver gelatin films. You could shoot in color and spend a lot of time

making it look like you shot it in B&W, but you can get the same result by just

shooting with B&W in the first place. Peace.

The best answere is really use what you want and what you like. I prefer tradition B&W film and darkroom printing for many reasons<br>1 I like the way using different films or developers gives me different looks.<br> 2 I like to shoot something on a Sunday morning and make prints in the evening when everyone else is sleeping B&W printing is quite and my epson is too noisy and is in our bedroom.<br>3 Most importantly I like doing darkroom prints.<br> I have also made excelent digital B&W and color prints from my digicam on an Agfa Dlab they look a little different no grain very smooth but you can only do so much with a 2mp digicam.<br> For me I love tradtional B&W very much but it don't suite everyone. I would guess that many people don't see the point in spending hours in the dark only to produce something that doesn't even have any color.<br> It is really down to doing what you want and using whatever method to get results that you like, all the methods will provide excellent quality when done by a skilled person but they can all look like s**t when done badly.

For the parties above, I recommend the reading of the Oct-Nov 2003 issue of LENSWORK magazine, which is 100% into black and white photography and in particular the article "Evolution of the Artifact" by the editor of the magazine. While some of the folks above critized posted BW photographs as being converted to grayscale, they were not noting that the images were taken using BW film.....