Shooting in black & white

[Rolland]

Is it better to set your camera to black & white, or take your shot in color, and then convert it? What are differences?

[JimmyO]

When you do it later you can still go back to color if you you prefer. I dont think there is a quality difference.

[Garbz]

Definitely take all photos in colour. The reason being is the camera's black and white mode just converts all pixel on the image to their brightness values.

If you have the colour information then in photoshop, lightroom, or pretty much every decent image editing program you are able to choose how the colour information manipulates the brightness.

For instance a scene with a red car against the blue sky background would look horrible black and white. But if you take the photo in colour, convert to black and white by using only the red channel which simulates a #25A filter, then the car goes white and the sky goes black making the photo much more dynamic.