Black & White Photography

moomike

moomike

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I tend to shoot quite a bit of Black & White photography & always try to visualise the shot in mono before I take it (not always successful obviously :lol:) I then convert to B&W via post processing for the most control.
Others that I know & have spoken to tend to take the shot first & then see if B&W would work to enhance the shot at all (I also do this sometimes), whilst others shoot B&W straight from camera, keeping a RAW file with the colour information if required.

When shooting for B&W, aside from the usual compositional considerations, I tend to look for high contrast areas within the scene & also hard edges, curves & clearly defined details for added interest, trying to avoid similar tones being too close together (although if working digitally, this may be remedied to some extent within the channel mixer, etc.)

Upon a recent thread I was discussing Mono techniques with Creed & thought I'd see how others worked with this, if anyone had any tips on their B&W workflow they would be willing to share & also any ideas as to whether/how you go about visualising the shot as a B&W or whether you rely upon the post processing more? :thumbs:

Edit: 1st tip should come from me I suppose :lol: When using the Channel mixer, the first thing that I do is drop the RED channel down from 100% to 0% and begin instead with the GREEN channel set to 100% as I find that nine times out of ten the green channel gives the best beginning point for midtones (can be easily checked via the channels menu)
 
Thanks to the 30D's picture styles my camera is almost always in B&W. So when I preview what I just took its already in B&W and I can check if it worked. Then I come home, load into Lightroom and set them all to my B&W preset. The way I think of it is as if I was in the 60's and all I had was black and white film. There is no colour film, no option of saying it would look better in colour. It either works or it doesn't. I think the best way to go about black and white photography is to do this or you will ponder whether it looks better in colour. Its like Yoda says, do or do not there is no try. Its either a good black and white photograph or its nothing. Yes its a bit strict but since I've been doing this I feel that my black and white work has really grown and I can't see myself going back to colour, for people anyway.
 
Excellent advice Pete, B&W definitely works for you :thumbs: Does the picture style maintain colour information or is it discarded?
Know what you mean about the strictness thing, with me mainly using prime lenses I have had to really think about my compositions & zooming with my feet :lol:
 
When they're loaded into Lightroom they go back to colour. Its more about thinking and working completely in B&W.
 
Film is cheaper than ever. I shoot B&W film
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Of course, I don't do that all the time, but now even when I'm shooting digitally I approach B&W conversions the same way I do in the darkroom, trying out a few different "base" conversions until I get the general tonality I want. Then I work the contrast (through curves) & make any local dodging // burning adjustments I see fit. Finally I tone the image if desired.

Occasionally I work a little bit backwards with the digital image, adjusting the contrast a little before I do any B&W conversion.

I also don't have auto image review turned on on any of my digital stuff anymore, and only ever look at images on the LCD if I have a very specific reason to do so. I find I work better if shooting time is shooting time and only shooting time, then darkroom // photoshop time is just that. If I'm not happy with an image at this point, I reshoot. If the job was a wedding or something else non-repeatable then the onus is on me to get it right there and then, but I still don't bother with the LCD (exception being those effin' group shots!).
 
Hoodi said:
I also don't have auto image review turned on on any of my digital stuff anymore, and only ever look at images on the LCD if I have a very specific reason to do so. I find I work better if shooting time is shooting time and only shooting time, then darkroom // photoshop time is just that. If I'm not happy with an image at this point, I reshoot. If the job was a wedding or something else non-repeatable then the onus is on me to get it right there and then, but I still don't bother with the LCD (exception being those effin' group shots!).
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I would have to agree with the above I now only look at the LCD when I need to not automatically... for me this came from my standard battery being useless and not lasting long but since doing it I far prefer to only check those photo's that I need to get right otherwise I spend more time taking pictures than looking at the screen, also found I was deleting photo's that probably were going to have been ok when on screen.
 
I have been recomended by someone that the best way to B&W from digital is to use split RGB and select the green image. This may be because the eye has more green sensitive rods than any outher, so the Bayer pattern is 50% green to 25% each red and blue.
Personally I find the green option a bit "solarised"
 
petemc said:
Thanks to the 30D's picture styles my camera is almost always in B&W. So when I preview what I just took its already in B&W and I can check if it worked. Then I come home, load into Lightroom and set them all to my B&W preset. The way I think of it is as if I was in the 60's and all I had was black and white film. There is no colour film, no option of saying it would look better in colour. It either works or it doesn't. I think the best way to go about black and white photography is to do this or you will ponder whether it looks better in colour. Its like Yoda says, do or do not there is no try. Its either a good black and white photograph or its nothing. Yes its a bit strict but since I've been doing this I feel that my black and white work has really grown and I can't see myself going back to colour, for people anyway.
Click to expand...

Interesting, i've always been "shoot in Colour, convert to B&W to see if it works" If it doesn't I let it stay in colour, i feel that it gives me more control.

BTW, the picture styles is in the CD that the camera comes with ? I have STILL not installed it after 10 months owning the camera.
 
If I'm gonna shoot b&w then 9 times out of ten I'll do it with the d200 in b&w mode. Capture nx then preserves this when I edit the shot so it's a pure b&w workflow for me.

I started off with b&w film years ago so am quite used to seeing in mono and working this way.

That said though. I occasionaly do still find a shot in colour that I think has the tonality to make a good mono image and will give it a try post capture.
 
Gandhi said:
If I'm gonna shoot b&w then 9 times out of ten I'll do it with the d200 in b&w mode. Capture nx then preserves this when I edit the shot so it's a pure b&w workflow for me.

I started off with b&w film years ago so am quite used to seeing in mono and working this way.

That said though. I occasionaly do still find a shot in colour that I think has the tonality to make a good mono image and will give it a try post capture.
Click to expand...

Do you not find you loose valuable informatimon when you strip away the colour data? When doing B&W conversion in Lightroom, I often rely quite heavily on the origional colour data for the B&W tonal adjustments.
 
As MK above, I rely on the colour data to get some effects in B&W. I find that Lightroom provides some pretty neat tricks for getting some cracking images.

I now try to 'see' the capture in B&W when on location but it is not the easiest thing to do. I find that B&W can actually save an image!

I get quite a lot of brides asking for B&W these days.

On a side note....I was doing a few test prints last week at home and found that out of all the brands of photo paper I was using, HP gave the best B&W rendition by far.
 
You can buy a very dark green gel filter that you can hold up to look through which does a fair job of desaturating a scene when you look at it to help you see if a BW image would work.
 
Messiah Khan said:
Do you not find you loose valuable informatimon when you strip away the colour data? When doing B&W conversion in Lightroom, I often rely quite heavily on the origional colour data for the B&W tonal adjustments.
Click to expand...


He doesn't lose the colour data, though? I've not got Capture NX but I'm 99% sure that it displays RAW files with picture styles in a non-destructive way—it would be pretty silly if it didn't, anyway.
 
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