B&W conversion

[craig]

Digi and current software allows us to easily convert our images to greyscale. For our film friends let us assume that you have 2 cameras.

What decisions do you make and when? Shooting both and or converting is the obvious answer, and a safe one at that. Is there a point where we say "yeah that is a dramatic photo because the world is in colour, and bw is automatically more dramatic. Does silver take on it's own realm because of tonal subtleties. Certainly RGB can produce subtleties of it's own? Should we master greyscale before moving to RGB?

Personally; If there is even a hint of colour I go RGB. That puts my work at 90% colour and 10% bw.

Let us only speak of personal work. Mods... Feel free to do whatever if this thread is redundant and or in the wrong place or just plain nonsensical. Insert smile smiley here.

 

[Rob]

I tend to make a judgement when I visualise the photo. If it's interesting because of it's grain or texture, then it's probably a B&W, whereas if it's interesting because of it's colour then....

We wouldn't normally take a sunset in B&W and we wouldn't normally take a picture of a craggy faced pensioner in colour I suppose?

Rob

 

[Meysha]

With regards to what format I take the pics in. I always always shoot in colour. And convert to B&W in photoshop. The B&W mode on my camera is just horrible and has practically no contrast. I like having more control on how my B&Ws turn out.

I have shot some film B&W but because I hardly ever take B&Ws I have a hard time looking for the right 'scenes'... like rob said, you don't take a B&W of a sunset. So that's why I don't do any film B&Ws because I can't find enough shots to fill a roll... and I get bored easily, so that's why I like digital... I can do different things all the time.

 

[ksmattfish]

I find color to be the strongest, most dominating, most emotional visual aspect. It can easily overpower other visual aspects. This can be a good thing for the right scene. But sometimes where I'm seeing potential in tones, textures, shapes, etc... the color is wrong. I shoot a lot of scenes that I think have boring color, and in color the photos look boring. But remove the boring color, and the more subtle visual aspects are allowed to come out.

I also like how a BW image sort of says "this is a photograph". Much of the color photography that I like to look at is very saturated, with blur, long exposures, or multiple exposures. It almost looks like an impressionist painting. But with BW I usually like a fairly "straight" photo, without much manipulation (an exception would be Terri's bromoils, which I absolutely love).

And I do a lot of BW because I have a BW darkroom. Since I got a DSLR I've been thinking a lot more about color. I imagine that in the future I'll be doing mostly film BW and digital color.

 

[SLOShooter]

If the most interesting thing in the scene is texture, light patterns, or contrast. I usually think about shooting it in B&W. If the main subject is colorful, then of course I like to keep it in color.

There are no "rules" of course and now with selective coloring the lines are blurred even further.

On a side note I like to shoot B&W on film and color on digital. I still find some sort of subtlety missing in B&W conversions. Can't put my finger on it technically.

 

[tr0gd0o0r]

I haven't had a whole lot of luck converting digital to Black and white. I never get the same look that I long for from film. So I also shoot black and white film (b/c of darkroom access) and digital color, with a few rare exceptions. It also depends on if i'm in a film or digital mood at the time and what type of subjects I want ot be shooting