Colour or black and white?

[pukupi]

In One camera, one lens and one roll of film I noticed a lot of RFers choose black and white film.

The photo attached is one of the first I captured with my R3a + 40/1.4 S.C. and I used Photoshop's channel mixer for the black and white but I'm wondering now if there are some advantages black and white film may have over this digital darkroom process.

I am new to film and RFs and would greatly appreciate some RF veterans thoughts on this topic.

 

[schaubild]

If you only go digital with your negatives then color film has the advantage of all color information, means: you can select contrast based on more green or red information which gives you a lot of freedom in the post processing.
If you want to do high quality monochrome prints then pure analog still has an edge in my opinion.

 

[nwcanonman]

Well, part of your question is answered by saying many RF'ers prefer B&W, it's what's in for todays scene ~ ; - )
Also real black and white shot with a yellow or red filter gives me a different look than going greyscale with color can do.
JMHO.

 

[Mike Richards]

Shooting all color and then planning to test PS conversions to grayscale in hopes of getting a satisfactory B&W image is, IMHO, a poor way to go about it. The really good B&W images are obtained quite purposefully by photographers who train themselves to pre-visualize what a scene will look like in B&W. Only then do they obtain really top quality images. In "The Negative" Ansel Adams even recommends a dark brown or sepia filter of some type as an aid to visualizing B&W. More training and experience are needed to understand the effects of the various B&W filters. Using B&W film forces one to discipline the mind, and provides an opportunity for home processing, which opens up more horizons. If you're really serious about B&W, then that's the way to go.

 

[RML]

No offense, Mike, but... humbug!

I shoot exclusively in colour and turn my shots into monochrome. Would you say my shots are poor or lack the finesse, depth and impact of a true B&W shots?

There's no need for it to be either B&W or colour; they're not mutually exclusive. For me the whole point of shooting colour is that I leave the choice open to go either way. And I don't need to worry about having the wrong film in my camera when I stumble upon a scene that is just begging for colour or B&W. The film inside the camera is just a medium to capture the image. In your head, however, is where you "see" the image, either in B&W or in colour.

The whole point of using a digital darkroom is that one can experiment with every conceiveable filter effect. Ansel Adams would probably have jumped into the digital darkroom faster than anyone and not have lingered much in a traditional darkroom, if he had had the chance. Though he was an expert in the traditional darkroom methods he was just as knowledgeable about the emerging digital opportunities during his life time.

The home processing argument is IMO similarly flawed. I've done some home processing and find it tedious, fraught with too narrow margins, and needing too much experimenting to get satisfactory results. Only after you've found a soup that works with your film you get to relax a bit, until you change film or developer; then the whole rollercoaster start over again.

So, though B&W is the way to go for some, it's IMO ridiculous to advice someone to shoot exclusively B&W because it's the only way to get good shots. There's a lot of B&W crap, and very little supremely good B&W work, and it's the same for colour (and equally so whether you shoot (d)SLR, RF, MF or LF) . It's not the medium that you shoot that makes the difference, or what camera, or what scanner, or what developer. It's how well you understand your choosen medium, your camera, your gear, your (digital) darkroom methods and techniques, and what it takes to make an image that speaks. That understanding can IMO only come from practise, practise, practise with whatever you are using at the moment.

 

[Doug]

I agree 100% with Mike; it's a mental modal matter! Further, some perceptive experts contend that B&W film "makes up" for the lack of color information by producing enhanced "micro-contrasts" in the tones it records. With a color image offering detail discrimination by virtue of differences in coloration, these tonal microcontrasts are not recorded as strongly. And this is said to result in a slightly "lifeless" effect in desaturated color images.

 

[Nikon Bob]

My thoughts are along the lines of RML's on this.

Bob

 

[Pherdinand]

There are scenes which just work much better in black and white than in colour. I myself am not trained enough to immediately realize on location (or, say, before, when loading the camera), which one would be better.
A rule of thumb for me is, for low-light/interior shots i use almost exclusively black and white, from 400 to 3200 iso (unless i accidentally end up shooting and only have colour in the camera). Also, in my tlr i somehow feel/was feeling uncomfortable to load colour film (but i did not insist on this, maybe i would start to like it).

 

[Roman]

I prefer 'real' B&W film since color negs don't print well in a conventional 'wet' darkroom - and darkroom printing for me is at least 50% of the fun in photography (I love messing around with lith printing...); if I were only scanning and doing my work in the 'digital darkromm', I guess for a lot of stuff I could just as well use color neg film (except maybe for TMax 3200).

Roman

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Okay,

So everybody agrees that Shooting Black and White film and then Colorizing it is not the way to go. And I even have my Mr. Scent Color Magic-Markers. You can color in the scene and then SMELL the results. Strawberry Fields Forever.

Good reason for Packing two cameras.

 

[RML]

Mmmm, Brian! Strawberry flavour! Do they also come in Chocolate and Banana flavours? 😛

 

[Socke]

I shoot silver based B&W for two reasons.
1.) The grains look different
2.) Homeprocessing gives me better results than affordable C41 labs.

Here you can't get development only, you have to order prints.
C41 B&W film, development, prints and scans on a CD amount to 15 Euro and the scans are 1500x1000 with medium JPEG compression and the prints plain suck!
So I soup my Adox CHM 125 and 400 (Ilford FP4 and HP5 material cut and spooled by Fotoimpex) in Amaloco AM74 for around 4 Euro per roll and scan 2700dpi Tiffs.

I do day to day colour with a dSLR and only my travel pics are on Fuji slide and Fuji Press 800 print film.
OTOH I have a roll of cheap Agfa ISO 200 film in my Contax TVS and a Contax RTS just in case 🙂

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Remy, Brown is Cinnamon and Yellow is Lemon. The funny thing is our Supply Store at work sells them. Picture, if you will a Scientist sitting at an Optics Table conducting a High-Tech experiment using His "Mr. Scent" colored markers to draw the diagrams in his lab book. And they say government supply officers do not have a sense of humor.

If I "colorize" the pictures from last weekend, I will have to watch out for Yellow Snow. We do not have lemons, but do have a lot of deer.

I miss Pan-X. Processing film at home is not the same without it. The lack of grain and very high resolution was remarkable. I used it with a Micro-Nikkor 55mm F3.5 on my Nikon F all through college. These days I shoot C41 Black-White and color. Lack of time for the darkroom. When Nikki gets interested, as she has done so already with my Leica M3, I will get it back in gear.

 

[taffer]

Brian... LOL !

Once I started developing at home I simply couldn't stand having my negs out for 3-4-5 days and pay 5-6 euros for a neg-only developement. The hybrid way is perfect for web purposes, I only have to find a suitable way to produce decent contact sheets and b&w prints without spending a fortune. I'll probably try that quad-ink sets for that Epson (860C) ?

Also, the color -> B&W conversion comes in handy sometimes (specially with the channel mixer that is fantastic), but I seldom miss color on original B&W images. If I can't make them work in b&w, then I'm not really interested to see how they would look in color...

And if not... I can always PS-color the Coke can 😉

That said, I also enjoy color from time to time...

 

[pukupi]

nwcanonman, grayscale conversion is nasty but I use a monochromatic channel mix to get to black and white.

The converted photo shown has a 90% red, 10% green filter.

 

[Socke]

Brian... LOL !

Once I started developing at home I simply couldn't stand having my negs out for 3-4-5 days and pay 5-6 euros for a neg-only developement. The hybrid way is perfect for web purposes, I only have to find a suitable way to produce decent contact sheets and b&w prints without spending a fortune. I'll probably try that quad-ink sets for that Epson (860C) ?

I have the Lyson neutral QuadBlack inks in an Epson Photo 750. The result isn't that bad, better than everything I produced in a wet darkroom that is 🙂

 

[taffer]

I have the Lyson neutral QuadBlack inks in an Epson Photo 750. The result isn't that bad, better than everything I produced in a wet darkroom that is 🙂

Ey that doesn't sound bad then ! Now I remember, it was the Epson C86 I read about here. Anyway I even found quadblack inks for my ancient 440, but the poor best has 10 years on its back, I guess it deserves some rest printing text-only things...

 

[GeneW]

I've done B&W both ways and, frankly, it doesn't make much difference to me if I convert col or shoot B&W straight -- I get good and bad results either way.

I do like the B&W mindset I get into when shooting B&W film though and I enjoy developing the negs myself. That's reason enough for me to keep shooting B&W film.

Gene

 

[Solinar]

The top photo appears to my eyes ae a desaturated color image. It did however wonderfully eliminate the hues from the tungsten lighting. Fortunately or unfortunately, I've seen a lot of this recently.

I'm not going to sit on any fence and I know I'm not dreaming when I say that the "old style" grain structure of APX100 and Tri-X, when wet printed still yields a print with more bite to it.

In the final print, these obsolete, old style B&W films yield much better tonality. It's that simple. Nope, not unless they are properly developed, and then traditionally wet printed with an enlarger. In short, I'll place a second vote for the "microcontrast" viewpoint, provided you are not scanning and using an electronic printer.

The traditional wet darkroom printing process isn't so tedious, once you've figured out your routine. The BIG DOWNSIDE is it requires quite a bit a space. A Nova slot processor helps things immensely. The OTHER DOWNSIDE is I cannot do a wet print at work when the boss isn't looking.

If I want the C41 look, I prefer to start out with Ilford XP2. I'm not always happy with the contrast, so I'll usually leave a Y-2 filter on the camera and print with a #2.5 or 3 variable contrast filter. If need be I'll shoot with an Orange filter, which means shooting at an E.I. of 50.

I mention Ilford XP-2, because its film base color makes it better suited use with a traditional optical enlarger.

The nice part of using a traditional enlarger is it elimates the scanning process and post scanning manipulation in Photoshop, (which IS tedious i.e. time consuming, no matter how you look at it).

Scanning in seems to have become the equivalent to the making internegs of slide film. I use it myself, to print color film in color.

 

[oftheherd]

Ey that doesn't sound bad then ! Now I remember, it was the Epson C86 I read about here. Anyway I even found quadblack inks for my ancient 440, but the poor best has 10 years on its back, I guess it deserves some rest printing text-only things...

Are you talking about the Epson 440? Where did you get the quad ink sets, are the Epson made? I have an old 440 of my daughter's, and a 640 of my own. The 640 actually made no bad b/w as is. I would love to try it with all black inks!