Black and White

[Bill Pierce]

A lot of us love black-and-white. Like many others, my interest in photography started with both a camera and a darkroom, an Ansco Pioneer and Kodak MQ Tri Chem packets in flower pots. As much to sell color advertising pages as any other reason, the news magazines switched to color about the time I started working for them. For the most part that meant you shot everything in color. If it was across the sheath from color ad pages, you ran in color. If not, your color picture got converted to black-and-white. But I still loved black-and-white and the darkroom, and 99 per cent of my personal work was done in black-and-white.

I still love black-and-white, but, of course, with digital cameras the darkroom has been replaced by a large computer. There are a zillion ways to convert digital color to black-and-white, and I do a lot of that. It can be done within mainstream processing programs or with supplementary programs like Silver Efex or Tonality Pro. It’s such a broad topic with so many facets and so many ways of accomplishing the end goal, a beautiful black-and-white print, we can all benefit from the experience of other members of the forum, whether it’s the programs they use and how and why they use them or shooting tips.

Here are my initial contributions.

(1) I think most b&w images benefit from much more from the clarity adjustment found in programs like Lightroom and Iridient Developer, a lot for scenics, a middle amount for everything else except pictures of your loved ones. Clarity, mid-range contrast, emphasizes wrinkles. I definitely recommend negative clarity for happy relationships.

(2) Areas of pure black or pure white are not out of place in black-and-white prints. Losing a little shadow detail to gain a rich black may make your prints look a little more like the silver prints many of us grew up on.

(3) A lot of digital cameras allow you to convert the viewfinder image to black-and-white, to record a full raw image that can be interpreted in anyway that you want in the future and a jpeg black-and-white that controls the viewfinder image. Looking through a camera’s viewfinder and seeing a black-and-white image is definitely one of the gifts of the digital age. If you haven’t tried it, give it a whirl.

What are your thoughts on black-and-white, your basic workflow or those little tricks that seem to make all the difference?

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I think digital b/w depends a lot more on the sensor. Not PC processing.
I have seen some nice examples, thinking of asking some photogs to give me permission to use their photos and write about it.

Overall, obsession with no-noise, low ISO, sharpness and over processing seems to be something which turns me off from most of digital b/w.

Personally, I have no big name to maintain, to me it is easier with film, darkroom and hybrid process, where I use nothing but old LR.

 

[Steve Bellayr]

E. Puts addressed this issue in his most recent volume. Summation: Digital Leica B&W equal to Leica Analog Film & Wet Printing. What I do is have a Lab scan my negatives and print the image using a computer. I am very satisfied. Of course, we are discussing a very high quality sensor, camera and lens.

 

[farlymac]

So far, I've done better with shooting in color, making corrections in PSE, then converting to B&W. My camera's monochrome setting leaves something to be desired, as the metering system seems to be mis-calibrated, and I'm always forgetting to set the compensation dial. Add to that, the view in the LED screen is much different in brilliance than what the camera actually captures. I really need to upgrade.

As for seeing in B&W, I've done that all along the past forty years. And there have been many more times I've said to myself "I wish I'd brought some color film with me.", than the other way around.

PF

 

[rhl-oregon]

It was a GRD III that possessed me to shift entirely to BW live view in a project I was shooting in Goodwill and St Vinnie thrift shops in 2011-12.

After that, monochrome VF/screen became my digital default, so now I have to 'cope' with the riotous colors in the optical VF of film cameras--except when they're loaded (rarely) with Ektar or Portra.

I've relied on Fuji's mono+green filter setting for a good while now (though shooting RAW+), in part because my LR starting place is its green filter preset for the highlight reduction it offers. This makes PP more seamlessly incorporate what I was seeing, or looking for, at the outset with the VF to my eye. By now I probably ought to have created a LR user preset that isn't as generic about clarity/sharpening boosts as LR Green Filter, but it is just a starting point.

And although a little RFF professor in my head keeps saying Reduce the highlights, bring up the shadows, how delightful it is in LR to max out selected sliders-- to paint it black, like what you see from bed through the window on a moonless night, or paint it blown, the way our eyes get blown out by summer glare--just to see whether there's an image better, more dramatically functional or more formally beautiful, than the happy medium that works best most of the time.

 

[jschrader]

I am fine with a classical viewfinder. I don't mind seeing a color scenery and making a b&w photograph.

I tried to do b&w photographs with a DSLR, and I failed mostly. Distraction, I don't know.

I am back to b&w film and when I take it, I know it is b&w. When I take the DSLR, I know it is color, something for the family album.

Maybe the MM would be for me, I would save all the scanning trouble and would surely gain IQ. But it is beyond my level of madness to buy a camera that, until the day it dies, costed my 5 to 10 € per frame which is worth printing.

 

[kxl]

I shoot B&W film primarily because of the first half of workflow -- the feel of an RF in my hand, composing and shooting with an RF and seeing the reversed images on the strip when I first pull it form the tank. The rest of my workflow is digital -- scan, PS and view/print. Sometimes the final image works; sometimes it doesn't.

I also use a DSLR quite extensively -- a very flexible and reliable tool -- and use Silver FX Pro to convert some images to B&W. Again, sometimes, the final images works; sometimes it doesn't.

In the end, a good image is a good image and a bad image is bad regadless of medium; however, ***FOR ME*** converting a RAW file to B&W allows more flexibility than working with scanned B&W film.

 

[DominikDUK]

I've noticed that B/W digi images from older sensors are often better than those of newer sensors this has something to do with noise suppresion on modern cameras.

 

[Hsg]

Before the advent of photography, in painting schools realism was the way to go, people studied the past masters and tried to paint as realistically as possible, especially portraits. Then photography came along and painters realized that realism was better left to photography... Artists realized times had changed so they needed to paint in new ways... That reaction led to impressionism and expressionism and cubism etc. etc.. Painters left realism to photography and moved on.

B&W film was the medium of choice because color film compared to it was terrible in every sense of the word. Today that is no longer the case... So the same way that realistic paintings of the past are admired but no serious artist paints them anymore, the same way while the B&W legacy of photography is admired, no serious photographer shoots B&W anymore. There are exceptions like Salgado and a few others, but those guys are very few.

 

[ChipMcD]

Before the advent of photography, in painting schools realism was the way to go, people studied the past masters and tried to paint as realistically as possible, especially portraits. Then photography came along and painters realized that realism was better left to photography... Artists realized times had changed so they needed to paint in new ways... That reaction led to impressionism and expressionism and cubism etc. etc.. Painters left realism to photography and moved on.

B&W film was the medium of choice because color film compared to it was terrible in every sense of the word. Today that is no longer the case... So the same way that realistic paintings of the past are admired but no serious artist paints them anymore, the same way while the B&W legacy of photography is admired, no serious photographer shoots B&W anymore. There are exceptions like Salgado and a few others, but those guys are very few.

If "serious" means "trying to make a living from it" that may be true. I am aware of a number of highly accomplished, original photographers doing great work in B&W.

 

[Hsg]

I am aware of a number of highly accomplished, original photographers doing great work in B&W.

But then again are they working in digital B&W or film?

 

[Baby of Macon]

@Hsq - "So the same way that realistic paintings of the past are admired but no serious artist paints them anymore".

With respect, that's a rather facile generalisation - not least because what is realistic is a matter of significant conjecture: for example, the work of the Magic Realists - c.f. http://www.monograffi.com/magic.htm. Closer to my home in Ireland you might want to check out the work of Martin Gale or Conor Walton. "Realism" in art is alive and well - just as expressionism and surrealism is in photography.

 

[MrFujicaman]

Jeeez, did all of us start our darkroom adventures with Tri-Chem packs ?

 

[airfrogusmc]

I lost my darkroom some years back through a kinda forced down size. I started printing B&W while I was in the Marines and joined the camera club on board the boat. Went to college where I majored in photography and took two semesters of the zone system. Yep did all the tests.

I now own a Leica M Monochrom and if you are a serious B&W photographer there really is not a better 135 format B&W digital tool.

I miss the darkroom and if I still had one I would be shooting film in some capacity but I don't so the computer is now my darkroom. My professional work also forced a move to digital. I started loosing clients because I wasn't digital. Gotta eat.

I do not use light room or silver effects. To me and the way I work photoshop is more like my darkroom workflow was so even though I have LR and Silver Efex I don't use either. Just personal preference.

I just had an exhibit at a gallery here in Chicago open this past Friday and all but 2 images in the exhibit were shot with my M Mono and all were digital approx 18 X 12 prints mounted, over matted and framed 20 X 24. Sold 4 with a hold and probably 5th sold.

 

[airfrogusmc]

But then again are they working in digital B&W or film?

Gibson just recently made the switch to a Leica M Mono.

His last book was completely shot with one.

I still love silver gelatin to. I think they both have a place at the table.

 

[willie_901]

I expose (longest useful shutter time, appropriate aperture and lowest practical ISO) for the nighest possible signal-to-noise ratio and analog dynamic range – the same technique I use for color work.

I don't switch the EVF to B&W because I am have always pre-conceptualized B&W with optical finders. When I use my X-Pro 's OVF the scene is in color just as it was when I used film RF cameras.

I only record raw and start all post-processing in LR. I start with one of the Fujifilm monochrome film simulation Camera Profiles. For other raw I use a custom Preset to desaturate using the HSL parameter sliders instead of the Saturation and Vibrace sliders.

After editing (image selection) I start over and refine post processing adjustments by exporting flat color images (16 bit TIFFs) into Silver Efex Pro 2.

I apply tonality that is consistent with the project I'm working on. Overtime I learned to avoid selectively pulling shadow regions just because I could. Still, some images require selective luminance adjustments. I have a couple of long-term projects with images from both scanned Tri-X and digital media. Silver Efex Pro 2 is useful to minimize the differences between film and digital media. Otherwise I do not attempt to simulate film grain/resolution in post processing.

I print using MPIX. I have never been disappointed with a MPIX B&W using their true B&W paper option. For work I exhibit, I use a local commercial lab. They also offer monochrome-only gliclée printing and a fine-art rag paper. If I'm really fussy I have have them start with a test strip.

Unfortunately I have not found an affordable source for self-published books with B&W images. I hope to learn how other RFF members source B&W book production.

 

[Lauffray]

I don't mind playing around and fighting with BW film to get what I want, I find it fun. I have yet to find a digital process that is as fun to me, from the shooting to the printing, everything seems poorly designed and frustrating to use.

 

[airfrogusmc]

I don't mind playing around and fighting with BW film to get what I want, I find it fun. I have yet to find a digital process that is as fun to me, from the shooting to the printing, everything seems poorly designed and frustrating to use.

That was me until the MM...😉

I think Gibson had an awaking to with the MM.

 

[harpofreely]

It seems like much of the digital b/w that I've seen has an "overcooked" look that is a big turn off. I really don't need to see all 256 shades in every picture.

"Overcooked" is definitely the word. I feel like I see a lot of digital B&W with the exaggerated local contrast that comes with flogging the "structure" slider in Silver Efex or equivalent - the effect often borders on good old oversharpening.

When I started darkroom printing from B&W negs, after about 10 years of getting pretty good at digital B&W, I had the good luck in one of my early, fumbling sessions to make a print of a picture of my young son smiling, looking out the window; both the neg and the print are a little under-exposed. There are no hard blacks, and no hard whites, but due to the quality of the light, what most often would have been a dull, muddy print instead has an amazingly delicate, silvery glow to the midtones, perfectly suited to the photo's content.

There is a gentleness and a vintage quality to it that probably could be arrived at via a digital print, but I've never seen its like on a monitor - and so I wonder, if it would ever have occurred to me to attempt it, had the image been of digital origin.

So I call this lucky because right at the start of my darkroom experience (and I'm still pretty slow and fumbling), I had an immediate, personal demonstration of some of the strengths of both the medium and the process - the "presence" of a traditional print, the serendipity, the pleasure of experimentation.

 

[harpofreely]

Jeeez, did all of us start our darkroom adventures with Tri-Chem packs ?

Not me - though my father had a darkroom in the house when I was a kid, I only started printing about three years ago. I had to google to see what these were - definitely can see the appeal.

Its not a major point in Bill's OP, but I think there is real value in starting B&W film work with the idea of seeing through the whole process at home - to "close the loop" so to speak, from shooting, developing, printing, and taking what you learn to the next roll. I love digital and I love film, but if I was just shooting color film, sending it out for dev & scans, posting a couple online, and calling it a day (what I think of as the Lomography model) - I'd have to wonder, why bother?

Bill - if you see this - I'm curious about the "flower pots" - is that literal?