RAW B&W on Canon 5D

[anton_v.]

I was shooting in Yosemite last month and met this photographer who

said she was shooting in b&w raw mode on her Canon 5D. I can't stop

thinking of what advantage the raw b&w provides over shooting color

raw and then converting to b&w. It seems as it would give you the same

result as just converting to b&w. Am I missing something?

[jdarko]

Well, if she is using any other RAW converter than Canon's own (as far as I know), the color will pop back when she opens them. The pictures will appear monochrome on the cameras LCD, but they really aren't.

[jespdj]

There is no "RAW B&W" mode. Picture Styles, sharpness, contrast and all other in-camera digital processing settings do not have any effect on the RAW data. The RAW data is always in color, since there is a fixed hardware RGB color filter in front of the sensor.

 

She must have been confused.

[ellis_vener_photography]

As others have said; no such thing as a "raw" B&W mode unless she has had the Bayer type RGBG filter array removed from her CMOS --which is highly doubtful.

[jmphoto1]

I believe you can set a BW mode in the parameters section of the canon's menu as I can on my 350d. The lcd shows a black and white image, but as mentioned above the RAW file has all the information in it still. The RAW conversion software from Canon, on my setup anyway, opens the file in monochrome mode but you can still change that back to color.