B&W

[Bill Pierce]

Has digital ruined black-and-white photography? In a sense - yes. When film was dominant, a majority of serious photographers worked in black-and-white because they could relatively easily and inexpensively control the image by developing film and making prints in their own darkroom. And those who did not have a darkroom had access to skilled printers who would work with them to produce “their look.” Even as color films and prints became more abundant, a great majority of “serious” film photographers chose to work in black-and-white because of the creative control they could execute.

Today the digital photographer can easily exercise creative controls in either black-and-white or color. He can easily excercise color controls that were never available in film work and that make even rather routine images attention grabbing at least in the short term.

Perhaps it was the curves of film and paper or the fact that it was difficult to blow out the highlights that gave silver prints from film their special look. More likely, it was because the film negative didn’t look like anything until you printed it. When that first test print came up in the developer and you said, “too light” or “not contrasty enough” you were talking about what you felt it should be. In today’s digital world, when that image makes its first appearance on the computer screen, it’s all too easy to say, “That’s OK.” Take away the color and that may not be true. You are going to have to make up for that lack with your interpretation of the image. And that takes time, skill and effort. Oh, and it has to be a good picture to begin with. Then it may be better in black-and-white than color.

Your thoughts - and certainly any thought about the many methods of rendering a digital image or color scan in black-and-white.

 

[Dogman]

Conversely, has digital ruined color photography by overexposure? Given the abysmal quality of most of the color photos I saw online, I rekindled my love for B&W several years ago. Today, I only shoot in B&W digital and I find it difficult to look at color photographs because they always seem to lack something. I don't feel that way about B&W photos. Probably because there are fewer of them online, I take more time looking at them. Not all of them are good, of course, but IMO there are more good B&W pictures today compared to color. Or maybe it's just my personal prejudice--I'll accept that as well.

I shot B&W film for decades. When I started shooting digital, I only did color. As time went by, I became disenchanted with most of my color photos so I started shooting B&W. While digital B&W is different from film-based B&W I approach both the same. I've worked out my own methods that work splendidly for me but I would hesitate to recommend them to others. There are so many pathways to the same destination it's sheer arrogance to claim any one method is the best.

 

[Erik van Straten]

gelatin silver print (heliar 50mm f1.5) leica mp

Erik.

 

[Erik van Straten]

Adding colors to a beautiful photo is like perfuming a beautiful lady who already smells good on her own.

Erik.

 

[boojum]

I understand the inclination to B&W among some. The "old masters" shot B&W because that was what worked, color was a novelty and a slow one at that. ASA 64 was standard. I do not adhere to the theory that older is better. It can be interesting and some old lenses, and I use them, with their vague, low contrast images can be attractive as an artistic exercise in stretching reality. But for a truer picture I believe that the current APO lenses so sharp and so color accurate are wonderful. I do prefer these lenses before a CCD sensor because I believe that they were better color than CMOS but CMOS is catching up and offers much higher ISO's with lower noise now. So to me the question is do I want artsy or real? It is a hard choice and while I mostly go color CMOS I still like what I can get lucky with now and again in B&W. Neither excludes the other in my world.

 

[DwF]

Has digital ruined black-and-white photography? In a sense - yes. When film was dominant, a majority of serious photographers worked in black-and-white because they could relatively easily and inexpensively control the image by developing film and making prints in their own darkroom. And those who did not have a darkroom had access to skilled printers who would work with them to produce “their look.” Even as color films and prints became more abundant, a great majority of “serious” film photographers chose to work in black-and-white because of the creative control they could execute.

Today the digital photographer can easily exercise creative controls in either black-and-white or color. He can easily excercise color controls that were never available in film work and that make even rather routine images attention grabbing at least in the short term.

Perhaps it was the curves of film and paper or the fact that it was difficult to blow out the highlights that gave silver prints from film their special look. More likely, it was because the film negative didn’t look like anything until you printed it. When that first test print came up in the developer and you said, “too light” or “not contrasty enough” you were talking about what you felt it should be. In today’s digital world, when that image makes its first appearance on the computer screen, it’s all too easy to say, “That’s OK.” Take away the color and that may not be true. You are going to have to make up for that lack with your interpretation of the image. And that takes time, skill and effort. Oh, and it has to be a good picture to begin with. Then it may be better in black-and-white than color.

Your thoughts - and certainly any thought about the many methods of rendering a digital image or color scan in black-and-white.

There still with all of this technology exists the need for a photographer to develop that sense of vision to succeed and for his/her work to endure. With that as a starting point, one would hope that a photographer would approach the experience of seeing and capturing images with a sense of B&W or Color in mind going-in rather than tweaking a file at the computer and hoping that something will stick. Of course I have been guilty as the next in going back and forth between the two with some of my digital files. And for me why the Monochrom was so liberating when I first went out with it. Going out now again with an M3 or Rollei and HP5 is of course similar to the Monochrom but also different as the limitations are greater, shooting and developing my film. Both share a commitment to B&W.

On the subject of rendering a color file in B&W I do feel that my experience shooting and developing B&W over the years enhances my ability to reconsider an image at the processing stage in a way that I find productive, or legit. That said, the experience of interacting with the world through my camera is still what drives my photography. And I refer to a balance between process and product, which is not affected so much by whether I am working with digital except that digital provides as you mention, control and technology that we didn't have at our disposal in earlier times.

David

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Here is zero limitation to do same BW on film and darkroom paper as we write here.
Except it is quicker, easier and less expensive with digital.
Quick&Dirty are the rules to stay golden these days.

 

[kbb]

It's "Color And Black And White On The Same Roll"!
I am now free to shoot without laboring with the knowledge that I'm "stuck" in either color or mono. Knowing that if the scene color is ugly or otherwise objectionable, I can click the mouse and examine the shot as a black and white.
All the arguments for the unique tonal beauty of film and silver prints notwithstanding, since my end goal is a inkjet print worth looking at, the ability to 'turn off the color' is nothing but a benefit for me.

 

[Out to Lunch]

"Has digital ruined black-and-white photography?"

Has anything really changed? I am not so sure. HCB, the regular recipient of overwhelming praise, never printed his photos. He had it done by a master craftsman instead. There is also a clip of Daido Moriyama sitting before a computer screen, together with a 20 something-year-old Lightroom expert, creating images according to his wishes.

 

[boojum]

From this short thread there seem no hard and fast answers re color vs B&W. It's the individual photographer's choice, thankfully. No one need be bound by what someone did a century ago in photography or any other field of endeavor. Imagine a world without Picasso and Dali. Surely they started classically but branched out following where there talent led. Imagine a world without Shockley and the transistor. So let us each find our own voice rather than be bound into a world of repetitive boredom.

 

[robert blu]

I like B&W, both film and digital.

One of the reason I used B&W when young was very prosaic: not the aesthetic but the cost! When I was 20 it was important to keep it acceptable. But shooting B&W, developing and printing it myself I learned many things which are still useful today when I shoot digital.

The starting point , the most important in my opinion is to go out with the intention to make, to produce a B&W image. Most of people I know go out, take the usual pictures they are used to take and when back home in front of the computer they decide to make a B&W photo.

No, to produce a good interesting B&W photo you must look for the light, the lines, the contrast. You must look for them. You must want to make a good B&W photo. You must see, think and react in a different way. It is like drawing with a pencil or charcoal instead to paint with oil colours. It is different.

Another thing important to me is the wet darkroom experience. When I sit in front of the computer screen and work on a B&W photo I do exactly what I used to do in the darkroom decades ago, each image needs a different treatment. Most of them must be subtles...modern softwares like LR or SEP offer many possibilities to digitally replicate the darkroom experience. Preset are useful as starting point but than the eye and the vision of the photographer are essencial.

The question if digital ruined B&W photography can be the same for color photography: the fact digital has made photography easier is a positive thing, but if people think because it is easy they are all good photographers....hmmm....I do not thnk so.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[Tom R]

It's a question of vision. What are you, as a photographer, trying to say? Color is an element of composition. If what you're trying to show/say requires color, then use it. As a general observation, less is more: good images are parsimonious, containing only a minimum number of elements, leaving room for the viewer to participate.

As to the question of digital vs analogue ... this is somewhat of a rabbit hole. Personally, I prefer film but that might be more a reflection of my experience and constraints; I have owned Leica equipment since the late 1970's and I don't really see the need to spend megabucks to purchase the latest M10/11, etc. But, again, this is a personal choice, and I'm sure that every member of this forum has their own situation.

 

[Godfrey]

With you, Robert Blu, 100% ... 🙂

I couldn't afford to do color negative process and printing at home so I always did b&w film or made slides before digital capture. Slides were/are mostly useless, most of mine have lived in folders unlooked at for decades. And yes, I've scanned them and they mostly don't look right to me.

Digital b&w was a problem for a while because there were few good ways to print b&w. That stopped being a problem once Epson and other printer makers started putting grayscale inks that worked into their print engines, and once the paper makers started making papers that worked well too. From that point on, it became possible to do satisfying, quality b&w printing.

Is a digital print the same as gelatin silver printing? Of course not: a gelatin silver print is always going to look different than any kind of digital print ... and there are several different digital printing processes that have been invented.

Is it better or worse? The question is meaningless ... Whether it satisfies the photographer, and maybe a photo buyer, or not is all that matters.

Has digital capture "ruined b&w photography"? Again, the question's meaning depends more on your personal preferences than it does on any objective notion of photography.

G

 

[agentlossing]

It's easier than people make it out to be: either the photo works better in color, or it works better in B&W. If the color contributes to the main subject, color is better. If B&W improves the main subject, or makes multiple elements work better together, because tone/light/shadow are the stronger features, and/or strong irrelevant color in the image distracts from the subject(s) the photographer wants the viewer to see.

In some types of photography, the intentionality is uppermost, so you need to decide beforehand whether you'll be on the lookout for colors or for B&W tones... but there's also the kind of photography where you don't get to make those choices due to lack of control of the scene - street photography comes to mind. You can shoot like Saul Leiter, where color is a main feature and people are secondary, or you can shoot like Winogrand where the subjects and serendipity is uppermost. I would say doing the latter you can't really tell whether color of B&W would be best. Obviously Winogrand knew his film and his process very well, yet who's to say some of his images wouldn't have worked better in color? (perhaps some of the ones which ended up on the cutting room floor)

 

[Disappointed_Horse]

I don't think digital photography has ruined black-and-white photography. Rather, I think digital imagery has ruined color photography.

I think today we are completely bombarded by overly saturated, eyeball searingly bright digital images on our phones, tablets, computers, TVs, and screens everywhere. Black-and-white images—especially in print but even on the glowing rectangles—are distinctive and eye-catching because they are so different from the mass of unnaturally colorful images we see every day. I think black-and-white images feel restful for the eyes (and brain), inviting a longer look and deeper consideration.

I personally shoot mostly black-and-white film and, other than family snapshot type stuff, convert almost everything I shoot digitally to black-and-white. This is not to say that I don't like color photography. I just don't like my color photography. I almost always like my own photos better in black-and-white, even if I didn't intend to make them black-and-white when I shot them.

 

[agentlossing]

I don't think digital photography has ruined black-and-white photography. Rather, I think digital imagery has ruined color photography.

I think today we are completely bombarded by overly saturated, eyeball searingly bright digital images on our phones, tablets, computers, TVs, and screens everywhere. Black-and-white images—especially in print but even on the glowing rectangles—are distinctive and eye-catching because they are so different from the mass of unnaturally colorful images we see every day. I think black-and-white images feel restful for the eyes (and brain), inviting a longer look and deeper consideration.

I personally shoot mostly black-and-white film and, other than family snapshot type stuff, convert almost everything I shoot digitally to black-and-white. This is not to say that I don't like color photography. I just don't like my color photography. I almost always like my own photos better in black-and-white, even if I didn't intend to make them black-and-white when I shot them.

Film often had a way of compressing the hues to create a rather complementary palette, in a way that digital definitely does not do natively. The analogue means of obtaining a complementary color palette was entirely down to the dyes chosen and their limitations (as I understand color film chemistry, in other words dimly). Digital just renders colors, as accurately and mercilessly as possible.

Maybe the hardest part of digital photography is that post-processing offers so much mind-boggling choice in the way your colors end up. Would anyone be interested in a color sensor that rendered slightly faded, complementary color palette along the lines of Saul Leiter? I would... even with how impractical that would be. Taking a little bit of the choice away from color photography without taking away ALL the color might be nice.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

I appreciate the B&W mixer in Photoshop. With it, I can simulate filters that could not exist in the physical world.

Here's an example that I think was better from digital than it would have been from BW film.

 

[Darthfeeble]

Bill, you moved from what you called "serious professionals" and how they handled their film prints to what can only be called an amateurish way of converting to mono. I suppose that that same "serious professional" would still take the same care with his/her digital monochrome prints as the film ones. If monochrome is dead it would be because of demand not processing I would think.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Nov 1987, Pop Photo, Get great B&W prints from your color negatives. Also Polaroid Slide Film being introduced. I used the latter to make slides of color digital graphics before Dye Sub printers came out. Also had a Polaroid 8x10 on a Matrix camera hooked to the computer.

I don't digital has ruined B&W. Some of the techniques are not very good.

 

[boojum]

Film often had a way of compressing the hues to create a rather complementary palette, in a way that digital definitely does not do natively. The analogue means of obtaining a complementary color palette was entirely down to the dyes chosen and their limitations (as I understand color film chemistry, in other words dimly). Digital just renders colors, as accurately and mercilessly as possible.

Maybe the hardest part of digital photography is that post-processing offers so much mind-boggling choice in the way your colors end up. Would anyone be interested in a color sensor that rendered slightly faded, complementary color palette along the lines of Saul Leiter? I would... even with how impractical that would be. Taking a little bit of the choice away from color photography without taking away ALL the color might be nice.

IIRC this "compression" was more common in Fuji than in Kodak. I. E., Kodak had a larger color palette. Some camera sensors today allow for "older," "slightly faded" color palettes. Leica does and IIRC so does Sony.