In the Prater

As some of you know, B&W is not usually my thing; but I went out for a bike ride in the Prater (Vienna) this evening and took my little Sony RX-100, set to B&W. When I saw the results in Photolab, I was surprised that the raw files were in colour and only the jpgs were B&W. But it took only a moment's thought to understand why, and also to understand why the Leica and other monochrome cameras are inherently better for B&W.

This is the famous Riesenrad (giant ferris wheel) as you enter the Prater:

And this shot of the other side, towards the sun (very Third Man, I thought):

A little further on, I found this:

Which looks much better to me in colour:

And even better when you see the clown in colour up close:

We are now in the Prater proper, a park which is 4 km long. I stopped off to take a closer look at the Carl Ziehrer memorial:

Carl Ziehrer in context:

And a deeper look into the distance (also rather Third Man):

With apologies for lapsing into colour earlier...

David

That‘s a great shot - very well composed and effective in B&W! Even though I‘m from Austria I‘ve only been to the Prater once and never in the "Riesenrad"… 😅

Thanks, simplejoy! The little Sony doesnt do too badly, I think, though the R6 is a bit better, both in colour and B&W. My main dislike about B&W is its tendency to make outdoor photos look dreary, particularly because of the sky tones. Filtering doesnt mitigate this in my experience, indeed it often makes the skies look more threatening. In a studio situation, particularly with Hollywood, eg old Warner Bros, movies, this is avoided by clever lighting. A low luminance section of a colour photo does not look as dark as in a B&W equivalent. B&W photos tend to have a predominance of dark areas. (See the comparison above.) For this reason, I find night shots more interesting. But I shall persevere!

David

Shadowy, postwar Vienna is all the rage for film noir fans of The Third Man.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=21h0G_gU9Tw