Digital Black and White images

[dxqcanada]

Should B&W Digital photographers study Black and White film images ?

Is it just me or are B&W images from DSLR's lacking in quality ... they do not look like B&W images.

Coming from a film background (developing/printing) in B&W I find that many images lack contrast, proper exposure, etc. Kind of like taking a colour negative and just printing directly on B&W paper.

There are many images on the web of scanned B&W film images to use as a gauge.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&s...gc.r_pw.&fp=93a12d59df540c13&biw=1178&bih=703

 

[480sparky]

Most B&Ws are just color shots stripped of their color. That's where a lot of them fail.

Taking color out of the picture forces the photographer to concentrate more on content.

That, and there's more than one way to convert color to B&W.

 

[D-B-J]

Depends on how the image is converted.

 

[dxqcanada]

Depends on how the image is converted.

Yeah, but if they do not know what a B&W "should" look like ... they would not know if the conversion is wrong.

 

[D-B-J]

True

 

[dxqcanada]

... "wrong" relative to Digital B&W images that try to appear as Film B&W images.

 

[Garbz]

The difference is the control of tone. In the film world you needed to think about the tone. More importantly you needed to see the tone. When you apply a red filter to the front of a lens to bring out pastey skin tones you could see it. You could instantly appreciate what it did. Film users often picked films for their tone and grain, ... mood even. It wasn't a case of moving sliders around till it looks good, it was a case of thinking how colour looks in black and white before the photo is taken.

Too many digital photographers (in my opinion) look towards black and white as the answer for a shot that didn't look good in colour and ultimately fail to impress for that reason. I reckon there's a lot to learn from film if nothing more than the reality that you have 36 photos each costing you $1, so think before you shoot.

 

[KenC]

B&W film has inherently very high contrast, at least when developed according to manufacturer's recommendations. Merely desaturating a color image just doesn't get you there, and does produce something which looks kind of like a color negative printed on BW paper. Contrast can be added in the conversion and/or by using Curves and other tools in PS. I agree that people with no film experience often produce strange-looking images. This is true in color as well, where oversaturation is a common problem. It's not a matter of having to imitate what film images looked like, because that shouldn't be a requirement, but of getting the appearance of the image to work with its content and "feel". Oversaturated color images and low-contrast BW images often do not accomplish this.