B&W or color for the streets?

[kshapero]

I live in sunny colorful Florida. To keep from stating the obvious I am drawn to B&W.

Shot a nice set of candids of film producer David Gil.

 

[noimmunity]

both. but i don't do street that much...

New York City, Feb. 2008

 

[Bas]

For me it's a complex thing. I used to shot only B&W with my Zorki 4 or my Yashica FX-2. Now that film has become scarce and its cost way too high, my father gave me a present, a Pentax K100D super, so now I have the opportunity to try shots in both ways...

Nevertheless, I've found that it is quite difficult to make an absolute decision. Each scene on its own has its defined character (and the beauty is on the eye of the beholder 🙂 ). The problem is to see it I think.

For example, for me, this image loos certainly good in B&W:

But this portrait that I took of the girl sitting on the next table at that bar, loses all it's "life" in B&W.

So, I've come to find that each scene has its own character, and while on the street, you can find any. However, if I would have to make a decission, I'd go for B&W.

Best,
Bas.

 

[peripatetic]

It's an interesting question.

I've only recently come back to film, so I am still experimenting, but I have gotten used to shooting colour with digital and converting to BW where I think the subject works better that way.

This makes me more inclined to shoot colour negative film and do the same thing. I am very interested in testing whether C41 BW films add anything over and above shooting in colour and converting after scan. My suspicion is that they will add very little and one has to give up the option of colour.

Silver of course looks different, but my local lab says it's harder to scan. I don't have my own scanner yet so this is all an adventure. There is of course the (rather perverse I suppose) option of adding digital grain/filters to a file that is scanned from colour neg and converted to BW. But if it works...

I guess if I can get the monochrome results I want from shooting colour neg and converting later then that seems to give widest range of options. Also it seems (for the moment at least) that the cheapest film around is colour neg.

 

[Bingley]

I think the choice depends on one's taste, where and what you're shooting, and whether you develop your own. I really, really, really admire good b&w street photography, and am trying to improve in that area.

But there are times when only color will do...

 

[Roger Hicks]

Generally I much prefer B+W but commercially I have to shoot colour as well: many editors either dislike/don't understand B+W themselves or are convinced that their readers dislike/don't understand it.

What surprises me is that my hit rate of successful pics is much the same in both media, though as a general rule I find that colour compositions have to be simpler or they soon become 'bitty' and confusing; much like Paul's point, above.

Then again, I always shoot black and white film (including XP2); the number of successful conversions I have seen or made from colour (film or digi) is very low, because there's very often a 'dead' look to conversions. If anyone is limited to commercial scanning and wants to shoot B+W, I'd go for XP2: the fact that it's a dye image, not silver, makes it much easier to scan.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Nh3]

With color you see the surface, with black and white you see the essence.


Hello everyone, this is my first post. 🙂

 

[kuzano]

B&W plugins for photoshop

B&W plugins for photoshop

What I can't do is shoot a roll of colour "pretending" that it is b&w, knowing that I can desaturate it later if I wish. Bill

Consider the variety of plugins for Photoshop that allow one to convert to black and white with far more control than desaturation alone. Photo Retouche is one of a number. These plugins allow you to emulate various emulsions of B&W, plus control the color channels that affect a simple desaturation process.

CS3 and Photoshop Elements 6 both allow a couple of variations of conversion to B&W, plus filters to add grain. The plugins go far beyond whats in the base programs. Here is a free PSE plugin for BW conversion for example:

http://www.photo-plugins.com/Plugins/Plugins/B-W-Conversion-2.html

A friend (photographer) suggested to me that it does not make much sense to go out shooting and not bring back the color information, whether film or digital, with the post processing control we now have at our disposal.

Another variation on that theme is Coloriage 5.0 which works on CS3, Elements and has a MAC version allow you to add color to a black and white shot.

 

[Damaso]

Of course it would depend on the streets I was wandering. But unless color is an important part of the landscape I prefer black and white. Cities offer lots of opportunities for concentrate on form and line and black and white helps accentuate that in my opinon...