I would be cautious with mono jpgs from the camera, which usually are 8bits. This gives only 256 levels of grey, quite limiting for further working on the file.
Instead, a raw file has 10/12/14 bits times three colours to be scaled down and sorted into 16bits tiff final file is much more powerful at retaining valuable info, which is much more rich in nuances on the grey scale at the end.
If you have print in mind, this can be relevant.
Just my advice here :-).
Greg
I haven’t felt constrained with the MONO JPEGS and the prints (although rare) seem to be just fine. I also find the 50mpx handheld high Rez mono files from my OM-1 and OM-5 have lots of latitude for adjustment.
For sure, it all depends of the camera algorithm and the treatment it applies when producing the mono files. I don't know the OM cameras, I was more commenting on a general level, having tried this with other cameras and have experienced limitations with the b&w jpgs produced by my F100 at that time.
Everyone his/her own experience :-) in this. It's anyway always fine to try different approaches, as each have their benefit and their ratio simplicity/complexity. Sometimes, it can be better to simplify the entire process, other times it can be better to go deep and complex, even just for the sake of experimentation. That's also what's fun with current photography :-). One can take a pic just to try, treat it just to see, all this in this day and age is free. That was not the case when one had only 36 pictures at a given ISO settings.
Thanks Gary, I should try sometimes to take direct b&w from my Sigma fp and see how it works out for me, I could be surprised, one never knows beforehand :-).
Greg
Some of my recent cameras allow a control ring on the lens to choose between "picture styles", which could theoretically be used to cycle through virtual color filters, of many different types, but all I can cycle through is a very limited number of "picture styles" and I wouldn't want to alter them all just for monochrome. It would be sweet to have a choice where the control ring varied color filtration through the spectrum while in a single monochrome "picture style".
If one wants malleable JPEGs, it is best not to use settings that do too much NR; NR is a major cause of posterization in JPEGs. When doing mono, noise is not as objectionable, anyway, so in monochrome mode, it might be wise to turn off NR as much as possible, if you expect to work with a JPEG.
The answer is to do NR on the raw file.
David
For those with EVFs.... Try this experiment... for the same scene shot with color through the EVF... set camera to BW and shoot through the EVF.... Next repeat in a different scene... start with BW... then move to color...
For me, this proved to be a good learning experience.
I have been thinking about my initial question and looking at B&W photos on this site, and I am bound to say that the vast majority of them are uninteresting to me. I have decided that this is something to do with the way I look at things. (But there was one posted here a few weeks ago of a woman walking under a girdered bridge in the city of London on a rainy day. It was taken by a Leica monochrome camera, and I liked it a lot. I cannot now find it, of course!)
David