Why shoot in b&w?

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peewee

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I am wondering why you would shoot in b&w rather than change to b&w in pp. Just wondering if i was missing something?
Thanks:rolleyes:
 
i shoot raw, so all colorinformation is available...... BUT i follow a complete B&W workflow:
- my lcd is set to B&W
- I proces files in C1 wirh B&W profiles

I never watch how a picture i took looks in color ... i am dedicated to B&W shoot with B&W in mind and proces accordingly.

I do not believe in a "see what we have got and what works best approach" to photography.

With digital a lot of people aim for color and if the picture sucks they start fooling around wirh B&W to see if they can rescue a shot.
I never believed in that approach!
 
J.Borger, you have an excellent b&w eye, your work is very good.
I am new to the M8 and very new to my 50 lux pre asph which produces beautiful subtle tones of colour which i really enjoy sometimes. I mainly like b&w and must look into learning the pp. At the moment i just convert dng in Lightroom and move a few sliders. Your work inspires me to learn more tecniques.
 
For one thing, there are not as many affordable digital cameras that are as much fun to use as there are film cameras: Leica, Hasselblad, Rolleiflex, etc. Manual cameras make you think different. I think that it is fair to say that most b&w shooters on this forum are shooting some interesting camera with film, as opposed to a Canon EOS Rebel film camera (Zzzzz).

Black and white film does respond differently to light than digital cameras or even colour film that is de-saturated. Silver crystals and grain can be very beautiful in the way they draw the light. As well, shooting in a b&w workflow causes you to think about your pictures differently.

That said, I'm not anti-digital. I have seen a lot of beautiful b&w photos from digital cameras. Whatever you enjoy. Pick the tool for creative and personal reasons. Shoot b&w film for the special look it can give and shoot digital for the look that it gives, whatever your creative end is.

I hope this helps.
 
Thanks. I thought my original question was posted on the M8 M8.2 forum. I was referring to shooting with b&w turned on digitally in the camera.

I do regularly miss film. I agree, and i see some wonderful digital b&w work, for me though, on flickr for example, it's the film work which usually attracts my eye,and heart!
 
Because I've always done it that way. "If it ain't broke don't fix it!" Because I have all the equipment I'll ever need and it's paid for. I know how to use it without any concious thought, which is a good thing considering some of the meds that the doc has put me on.

I can't understand why anyone would shoot with digital color only to convert to B&W. You miss out on the entire spiritual experience, the time spent in total darkness followed by the time under the pale amber light. The odor of the chemicals, the soft gurgling sound of the print washer, the magic of watching an image appear on the paper.

The Stones or the 'Dead or the Doors in the background, bringing back memories. Computers have logical brains, perhaps even rational ones, but they ain't got no soul. Black and white Film has soul.

Next question?

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
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If you shoot RAW, you can apply the color mixer during post-processing, which is the digital equivalent of using filters such as red, green, or blue (or a mix of them). Thus, you can have a convenience that B&W film users do not have; they are stuck with the filter they used when shooting (they can perhaps simulate the look of another filter, but it is not the same).

If you shoot in JPG and save in B&W in the camera, you do not have the ability to apply the color mixer anymore in post-processing.

Therefore, my choices are to either shoot B&W film, or shoot RAW and convert to B&W post-processing using the color mixer.
 
Personaly I don't think any post processing technique can achieve the personality of the different black & white films!
 
jfserejo said:
Personaly I don't think any post processing technique can achieve the personality of the different black & white films!
Click to expand...

The channel mixer can be used to obtain the same effect as colored filters used in traditional B&W film photography. This has nothing to do with 'personality'.

While there are filters that are designed to emulate the 'look' of film in terms of grain and characteristic curves and so forth, I would agree with you that they generally fail to completely capture the essence of the films they seek to emulate.

However, the channel mixer is a legitimate tool, exactly duplicates the use of color filters in B&W photography, and is a legitimate answer to the question the OP asked, as opposed to a personal statement about one's biases.
 
Yes @bmattock! I think all tools are legit and one should use all that get the job done! But, you know, the image looses is character.
 
I'm not sure if the M8 can do it...but I shoot in Jpeg+RAW on my 50D with the picture style set to B&W... that way I get a black and white JPEG that I can look at in camera AND I get the benefits of a PP conversion to B&W with the Raw file... and still keep the colour information if I want it
 
I shoot JPGs always in b/w unless there is a compelling reason to show color, then I use color JPGs. I don't post process.
 
Why do so many people feel threatened by a mystical experience? Believe it or not, I recall one evening about 40 years ago when a group of us got into a heated discussion as to whether or not psychic energy was strong enough (if it exists at all) to affect grain size in developing film. We'd been talking about how when you've just had an important shoot the grain never seems as fine and regular as when you're developin pix of your kids in the park. Projections of nervous energy?
 
Al Kaplan said:
Why do so many people feel threatened by a mystical experience? Believe it or not, I recall one evening about 40 years ago when a group of us got into a heated discussion as to whether or not psychic energy was strong enough (if it exists at all) to affect grain size in developing film. We'd been talking about how when you've just had an important shoot the grain never seems as fine and regular as when you're developin pix of your kids in the park. Projections of nervous energy?
Click to expand...

I someone spent a bit too much time sniffing fixer.
 
Life was just, shall we say, different in the sixties? Also we were in our twenties in the sixties. Now we're in our sixties, but I know a lot of professional people, good upstanding pillars of the community types, who still smoke weed. Two weeks ago I attended a birthday party in a local coffee house directly across the street from city hall, which is right next door to the police station. Since it's against the law to smoke anything at all inside the coffee house there were a bunch of guys and girls standing out on the sidewalk passing a pipe around and toking away. Well, not exactly "guys and girls" so much as that range from solidly middle age up through senior citizen.
 
OK, on topic then, do you notice any difference in how and what you shoot depending on your mental state at the moment? That could be anything from just feeling happy or sad, or you could be drunk, stoned, or tripping at the time.
 
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