Black and White Photography vs. In Editing

[wade_thompson]

<p>Sorry, stupid question... I am NOT used to shooiing in black and white.<br /><br />Is there any difference in shooting in B&W (Nikone D300) versus just doing it on the fly when editing?<br />I'm shooting a family in the park and the mother says she wants some close up photos in B&W.</p>

[lachaine]

<p>Yes there is a big difference. In digital photography, it's better to do it after the fact because you have the original scene's colour information there to work with, which allows you to apply some filter effects. This is equivalent to having a film camera and using yellow, orange, red and other filters. If you don't use any filters in B&W photography, any sky in the picture is going to end up looking pretty useless (just empty white or very light grey). Since you can't effectively use black & white type filtering on the lens with a digital camera, you have to do it afterwards in post-editing.</p>

<p>But of course, to take advantage of this, you must be able to do some post-editing that involves various methods of conversion to black & white. Otherwise, if you simply convert to greyscale, you get more or less the same results you would have gotten from the camera's own B&W JPEG mode. These may not necessarily be bad pictures, but they won't be as good as they could be (keeping in mind that good B&W photography is all about tones and contrast).</p>

<p>It doesn't necessarily have to be as complicated and anal-retentively involved as the information on many websites would suggest. There are many free B&W conversion filters available for photo editors, either built-in or as plug-ins.</p>

<p>Another upside to doing it this way is that you do still have the colour image if you decide that it doesn't work well in B&W.</p>

<p>Since I've learned that I have to cover all my bases in photo.net posts, yes, I do know that some people just go ahead and shoot B&W with filters on the lens even though this is dropping data from the image due to how digital sensors work. Someone is bound to post a reply with great examples using this less than desirable method.</p>

<p>The images in my little freeloading photo.net gallery were made using the channel mixer method.</p>

[wade_thompson]

<p>excellent response.</p>

<p>The only program I have for editing is Paintshop Pro X2 which I believe has such filters (although I have not played around with it yet).<br>

Any other tips on shooting in color (but filtering to B&W), sharpness? saturation?</p>

 

[Matt Laur]

<p>Yes - it's different! Don't throw away all of that data as you shoot. If you must, shoot RAW+JPG and on-the-fly B&W, since that way you've got the B&W JPG that the camera renders, and you've got the RAW file with <em>all </em>of that extra tonal range and post-production latitude.<br /><br />If you don't already have it, download a 60-day free trial of Nikon's Capture NX2. It will allow you to make JPGs from RAWs using exactly the same process the camera <em>would</em> have used, thus allowing you to work up the settings you most like for in-camera processing. It's also a very good RAW conversion app (arguably, the best one you could use when working with Nikon's NEF files), and the u-point user interface might really grow on you.</p>

[CoryAmmerman]

<p>I agree with what Matt said. I use NX2 for all of my black and white conversions (well, all of my post processing actually). Rather than using the filters, though, I change color mode to either the back and white red or black and white green channel, and set white and black points to control the contrast. Sometimes I'll use a color control point to lighten or darken parts of the picture separately. The whole process usually takes less than a minute, unless I'm feeling indecisive about something.</p>

<p>Out of curiosity, I went back to one of my RAW files that I was working on last night and did a straight B&W conversion with NX2 to see what the camera would have given me, compared to what I did by hand. I'll post a stitch of all three so you can see the difference. Granted, the color of the RAW file is kinda wonky, so the camera might have done a better job converting to black and white under better conditions.</p><div></div>

[lachaine]

<p>You can even do this kind of stuff in Irfanview if you have the right BW conversion plug-in. It can use Adobe 8BF plugins. I do it in GIMP myself, and I've also used Sagelight. I have a Canon, and sometimes, I just use the monochrome picture style in the supplied Digital Photo Pro and the filter slider. It depends on the image. I'm basically a lazy bum, so I use whatever is the least work :-)</p>

<p>When it's black and white, however, no matter how I've gotten to black & white, I almost always do some digital burning and dodging... which is why the raw file is so important to me.</p>

[JAPster]

<p><em>Since you <strong>can't effectively use black & white type filtering on the lens with a digital camera</strong>, you have to do it afterwards in post-editing.</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

Is this correct? I would think that if you screwed a b&w filter on a lens mounted on a digital camera, say for example a Nikkor 28-80 AF lens on a Nikon D-300, then the filter would affect the light the same way it does on a film camera. The sensor will just digitize the affected light, and you would come up with an altered image. Am I missing something here? If Mr. Lachaine is correct, can someone please amplify and clarify this point? This is news to me......</p>

[CoryAmmerman]

<p>You can indeed still use black and white filters on digital cameras. I've tried a Tiffen #21 Orange filter on my D50. The effect wasn't really all that noticeable with this particular filter and still had to be adjusted, so I don't bother with it anymore. A stronger filter may be more effective. It's just as easy, if not easier, for me to get the same results without a filter. One good thing about using a black and white filter , though, is that you have to think about the composition in terms of black and white only (since the images will be useless as color images) which can sometimes lead to better results. </p>

[lachaine]

<p>Coloured filters for black & white photography belong to film, not digital. To put it as simply as I can, except for some specialized cameras, most digital sensors consists of a grid of cells laid out in a pattern of four, each being sensitive to one colour channel. Two of them record green brightness, and then there is one each for red and blue. After taking the picture, either the camera (for jpeg files) or raw conversion software on the computer "demosaics" these such that one pixel ends up containing red, green and blue information.</p>

<p>If you use a coloured filter, you are blocking light from the cells which are supposed to register a colour, whether that be red, blue or green. If that's a red or blue filter, you are effectively using only 3 quarters of the cells. If it's a green filter, only half the cells are recording colour brightness as they should. All this does is to reduce the information you have available to convert the colour scene to a monochrome one. You're degrading the image quality you paid for, and potentially introducing unnecessary artifacts in the smooth tones.</p>

<p>I mean, sure, the filters will screw onto the mount, and you will get a B&W picture of some kind, but it makes as much sense to use one for B&W as it would to use an on-lens filter to do white balance for a colour picture. There is NOTHING a filter on the lens can do that a "filter" in post-processing can't do a lot better.</p>

<p>Neutral density filters and polarizers are still useful, though, because they are colour-neutral.</p>

<p>If you're serious about black & white, forget about in-camera B&W. It's just a point & shoot gimmick for the non-photographer, at about the same level as most of those canned "scene" modes. Even if you're using JPEG, that's fine, but shoot it with full colour and monochrome it afterwards on your computer. You can do it with a JPEG as much as you can do it with a raw file (even though working with a raw file is better). In the digital era, to do it in post-processing is a sign of professionalism, not the reverse.</p><div></div>

[lachaine]

<p>or if you want some sky where you usually would not get any...</p><div></div>

[hjoseph7]

From my experience, whenever I tried using the in-camera B&W function, the pictures came out looking really dull, dead and dreary. When I converted Digital Color images to B&W, using the various methods that are available in Photoshop, things improved significantly, but the labor involved was quite intensive and remembering all those steps was a PITA.

 

Incredibly, I have had better luck scanning and converting Color film to B&W Digital(depending on the type of film), than converting color Digital images to B&W Digital ?

 

Since I still have a Darkroom, I rather take plain old B&W film, develop it in my own darkroom, rather than to go through all the hassles of scanning and Photoshop, IHMO.

 

I have to admit though I have seen some pretty incredible Digital B&W shots taken on this website that equal, or surpass traditional Silver Gelatin prints as far as resolution and sharpness are concerned, but they don't match that certain character for some reason.

 

It's like listening to LP's rather than CD's. The sound is smoother and there is not allot of clipping, although you still hear some noise...

[lachaine]

<p>I agree with what you say, Harry -- about both the film and LP's. If I still had a darkroom, I would be doing that too. I don't even like to just convert scanned colour film. I still use film... usually just XP2 because I end up scanning it, and it scans well. Overall though, I prefer real, silver-based B&W film. But I think I can still get reasonable results doing B&W with digital.</p>

[er1]

<p>Yes there is a big difference. In digital photography make sure to always convert in photoshop or with one of the many great filters available. IMO: In-camera B&W is ment for beginner photographers with no knowledge of post processing techniques.</p>

[derick_miller]

I generally agree that it is better to shoot RAW files which still contain color information, but I would not dismiss the

value of in-camera conversion for two reasons.

 

First, my point-and-shoot camera (D-LUX 4) does a pretty nice conversion most of the time, and it would often take me

a bit of time to accomplish something comparable in PS or Lightroom.

 

Second, the display and image review is in black and white, which I find helpful in creating the images.

 

My solution is, as pointed out earlier, to set the camera to save both the RAW file and the converted jpeg.

 

With my Nikon I still shoot just RAW and convert, since it does not possess the same virtues in this area as the point-

and-shoot. :-)