Is there an advantage to shooting B&W from your camera instead of PP

[MBasile]

If you shoot RAW it wont even come out as B&W unless you apply the cameras settings in your "developing" program. I learned this when I shot my first B&Ws with my digital and when "where the **** are my B&Ws!"

 

[RebelTasha]

If you shoot RAW it wont even come out as B&W unless you apply the cameras settings in your "developing" program. I learned this when I shot my first B&Ws with my digital and when "where the **** are my B&Ws!"

If you use RAW to shoot and use on camera B/W you can convert it back to Colour during processing with your Canon software..
Depends if you are on a mission to take B/W pictures or not IMO if you want to use it..
Either way though
(You can not retrieve the colour back if you use JPEG)

 

[Alex_B]

Don't mean to hijack the thread or anything, but how about B&W film? Would there be much of a difference if you used B&W film over using color and Photoshop?

Big difference. Latitude of b&w can be breathtaking, also grain can be superfine and resolution will exceed that of colour film (and I believe also most digital cameras). If you have the possibility to shoot b&w film, go for it.

as for in camera or pp conversion, you have much more control in pp.

 

[Rhubarb]

MBasile & RebelTasha have the right idea here imo.

If you shoot RAW + Jpeg then set you Jpeg settings for B&W. Then you can review your shots in B&W but still have the RAW's to do your own processing whether it end being B&W, colour or both.

Some people using digital for B&W find it helpful to have the entire workflow in B&W and this approach allows you to do just that.

 

[KevinDks]

Here's what I posted in reply to the same question a couple of weeks ago. I'll include the examples, rather than just give you a link to that thread.

You can do some really interesting things if you convert from colour to b&w using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop (or equivalent in other applications).

First in colour:

Then using the Channel Mixer you convert to monochrome, and play with the colour channel sliders. This is 100% red:

Next is 100% green:

Then the blue channel set to 100%:

You adjust the red, green and blue sliders to get the effect you want, mimicking traditional b&w filters used with film or attempting to get a similar look to a particular kind of film. If you shoot in b&w in the camera all you ever get is a greyscale image.

Kevin

 

[KD5NRH]

Big difference. Latitude of b&w can be breathtaking, also grain can be superfine and resolution will exceed that of colour film (and I believe also most digital cameras). If you have the possibility to shoot b&w film, go for it.

And don't forget to shoot different B&W film; nearly every one has some quirk of its color sensitivity that will change the final result a bit.