An unanswerable question

[icebear]

...Whether you are shooting with your phone, a Leica M9 Titanium or something in between, you can now choose after the fact whether the picture will be black-and-white or color. But, the one thing that modern digital technology has not provided is which is “better.” Obviously, it’s a decision you make on a picture by picture basis or on a series of related images. But. in many cases, I’m not sure which is best.

I’d appreciate any thoughts you might have, but it may be an unanswerable question.

Hi Bill,
there is a way out and there is indeed an answer to your unanswerable question: MM .
I committed to this much maligned B&W only camera and I LOVE it. I produced my best images ever using it.
With this tool my vision developed in the way it did only because of this little camera.

Different appoach for me: also when I shoot digital I usually already know if I go for color or B&W. I look for different things and compose in different way. My eyes and brains work in different ways.
...

Exactly the same here ... I "see" in b&w when I use the MM.

 

[emraphoto]

In the days when film was dominant, photographers often chose between black-and-white and color. After all, once you loaded up with bw or color film, you were committed. If printing your own photographs was important, it was easier to set up a black-and white darkroom. Printing color using dye transfer or even C prints was more complex and with more demanding controls. Even when affordable drum processors and other processes like Cibachrome became available, b&w darkrooms were in the great majority. (But those who committed to a color darkroom rarely turned back to black-and-white.)

Color received its real boost in two different photo worlds - snapshots and published work. Sending your snapshots off to the drug store for processing transitioned from b&w to color. And even printed publications that had limited themselves to black-and-white, like the New York Times and Time Magazine, turned to color when it became obvious that the ability to print color ads was a necessity. Time didn’t become “the colorful newsweekly” because the news was literally colorful. Quite often, if your news picture was on a printed sheath that had color for an ad, your news picture was in color. And even if you shot in color, if you weren’t, it often ran in black-and-white.

Both the snap shooters and the great majority of commercial, advertising and journalistic shooters relied on someone else doing the processing of color film. Boy, did digital change that.

Whether you are shooting with your phone, a Leica M9 Titanium or something in between, you can now choose after the fact whether the picture will be black-and-white or color. But, the one thing that modern digital technology has not provided is which is “better.” Obviously, it’s a decision you make on a picture by picture basis or on a series of related images. But. in many cases, I’m not sure which is best.

I’d appreciate any thoughts you might have, but it may be an unanswerable question.

I’ve always made the decision before I took the picture. Be it digital or film. I guess I compose differently for each one?

 

[pluton]

In Wim Wenders fine but somewhat grim 1982 film The State Of Things, the DOP character tells someone on his film crew: "Life is in color, but black and white is more realistic."
Jokes aside, black and white and color are two different media.
In casual/personal/experimental shooting, which is mostly what I do, I play with both freely, thanks to raw files.
If it's a job that's pre-specified, then it's easy...you shoot what the client asked for.