I see quite a few people here specialise in b&w photos, and have enjoyed a few of their results. Though I have seen b&w photos by photographers of earlier generations that impress me, I generally do not find b&w as interesting as photos in colour. I read that in being able to take good b&w photos one needs to be able to see the luminance well. I dont think I can do this. Is this something that some people have and others dont?
David
Black and white photography is all about shape and form, as well as shadow and light. It is a picture where colour adds nothing to the scene, or where the colour is a distraction. Most of the time I prefer to see the colours in a scene, but things like my old performing arts photography are better for having no colour, as it distracts the viewer. I think colour adds nothing to these old pictures below.
With digital, I shoot almost 100% in colour as I feel digital B&W is just a processing trick, rather than the choice it was with film. Yes, I know this is not logical. Black and white is for me a return to a past, now obsolete technology, and as digital saw colour photography come of age, I feel we should be learning how to work with colour and shoot differently.
I really can't answer your question but may I make a comment? When they hear of my difficulty in photography because I am red/green deficient, (color blind) the first asked question is "why not just do b&w? Really, I want all the color I can get. I would give anything to see normal color just once in my life! Statistics say that 5% of males on this planet are some degree of "color blind", usually red/green. So, what colors do they use for traffic lights, most charging indicators, lots of camera equipment? You guessed it!
Definitely not logical, sorry! Unless you are referring only to the conversion of RGB to grayscale as "just a processing trick".
On the other hand, one can extract unprocessed grayscale raw imagery from a raw file with such as DCraw or RawDigger which gets you as close to the scene tones as you can get - as opposed to the processing trickery necessary to produce proper color from a CFA or Foveon layers ...
... or just buy an M11 Monochrom, LOL.
I do get the sentiment though!
"Best bw film is colour negative film." ;)
Hi,
Having shot with identical silicon, meaning the sensors, where one had a CFA and the other without....I can tell you that shooting with a monochrome sensor is superior for B&W output than to shoot with the CFA in place and then ignore it.
Used to be common to see mono models alongside their color counterparts, but this has pretty much gone away now.
Stan
It's a trainable skill. In the film era, we used to use special brown gel filters, but you can just turn on B&W EVF mode if you've got a MILC.
Purely my uninformed opinion, but yes, I think some people are better at seeing "black and white" than others. Some of that may be because when they started photography 50+ years ago they had to learn to see luminance. A lot of photography, especially for hobbyists, was done with black and white film because it was a lot more affordable than color film and a color darkroom. I still have situations where I look at a scene/subject and think to myself that "this is a black and white image".
Personally, I think the current post-processing tools make it possible to create images that are well represented in black and white. Are they as good as from a monochrome sensor? I don't know. I've been happy with some of what I've been able to do. YMMV
50+ years ago, you not only had to know how to see luminance (or at least the response spectra of the B&W films, which wasn't luminance), you had to learn what a black and white image would look like through various filters.
I shot performing arts for our local theatre. They wanted black and white prints, because the news and a lot of the magazines wanted black and white pictures, because they were not printed in colour.
I tried colour printing in my darkroom, but it was very difficult and costly. Much better to use a Lab. Digital made colour processing doable at home.
I often try to visualize scenes while ignoring the colour. If one wants to preview b&w, I use a Kodak Wratten #90 filter which removes colour from the scene. Carrying one around helps previsualize the scene in b&w.
I will say that I have seen images from the Leica M10 b&w camera and they look better than those processed from colour files. There is one excellent one here taken under a bridge in the city of London in the rain, but I cant find it again. But, as I dont use the EVF to decide what I want to shoot in colour, I dont think that filtering its signal would help me. In fact, I remember colours and often refer to things, like food by their colours (e.g. "yellow things" are corn cobs, "red things" are bell peppers, etc!) When shopping I look for what I am seeking by colour. (Sometimes I am deceived and end up with the wrong thing, and if the manufacturer changes the packaging, I am screwed...)
I should add that I dont think I have any deficiency in my ability to see colours normally, but I would find it very difficult to see luminance through a filter. I guess practice helps, but I cant help doubting that Ansel Adams required much practice to see what would look good on his final prints.
David
AA worked hard at learning previsualization. It took him years to get it right.
The more B&W photos you take, the better you get at pre-visualizing them. Colour photos are perhaps easier to pre-visualize.
My older photos of people are almost all on B&W film, and I think B&W works better for people than colour. Skin colours never seem to be convincing in photos, and the colour distracts from the expressions.
Don
While looking for a #90 spectral curve, I found this:
shop.stearmanpress.com/collections/photography/products/tool-kit-zoneview-zonecalc-and-logbook
Speaking of Zones normally implies the Archer/Adams system. Some may find this of interest:
Always fun to think in real units ... LOL ...,
Thanks! I stand corrected.
David
I occasionally convert photos to B&W when I feel that the mood of the picture might be better without colors. It is mostly an afterthought.
I use the EVF on my Panasonic camera in B&W so that I can see the focus peaking color easily. I never thought of this for B&W photography though! Good suggestion. I will now pay attention to how the scene looks in B&W, not just the focus peaking color.
Thanks.
This is a confusing attitude to me. It seems to be akin to saying "standard lenses are old hat, we should be learning how to work with ultra wides and shoot differently"
Who cares whether a certain approach, technique, technology is old or new. I presume that most people who take up photography professionally, or as a serious hobby, want to make good photos, not restrict themselves to shooting family snapshots or holiday snaps (not to suggest that these activities aren't an important part of photography, they're are probably the most important, certainly the most common). If so, we should take advantage of anything that makes this possible or easier. Whether that be a lens, an accessory, lighting, post processing software, a technique, a style or whatever, we should be embracing the full range of possibilities.
B&W and colour photography are not competing, they are different. It doesn't matter whether colour makes a photo or absence of colour makes it, getting the result you want is the goal.
Today I received Michael Kenna's book Trees. A beautiful book full of beautiful photography. It even (bizarrely) smells good. The pictures in it are B&W; they may lack colour but they don't lack quality. It's the quality that results from the effective use of photographic characteristics that is important, not the particular characteristics employed. There are plenty of boring B&W photos and plenty more boring colour photos. They are not boring because they were shot in B&W or colour, they are boring because they are not good B&W or colour pictures.
One photographer I like a lot, the Scottish landscape photographer Bruce Percy, shoots exclusively in colour (film) but I always think that his pictures look like B&W in colour. Bruce knows how to minimise the colour palette and make use of the abstraction of line, form, tone often associated with B&W photography.
Examples here: brucepercy.co.uk/21-18#/fjallabak-2019/ It's colour, but it's so minimally colour, it's also almost B&W.
Another photographer I like, Spanish-American photographer Adrian Vila shoots exclusively in B&W digital but when I look at his pictures, I see a similar minimalist approach and simplicity of composition and tones that I see in Percy's work.
aows.co/archive/spain/galicia/a-coruna Paint Adian's work with Bruce's colour palette and they'd be brothers in arms.
Again, it is never the medium or the technique that matters, it is how those things are used by the photographer.
