shooting in monochrome - settings

[stevet1]

If I shoot in monochrome, do I have to adjust the settings, such as aperture or film speed?
Is say a 30 second exposure any different than a 1/60th of a second?

Steve Thomas

 

[tirediron]

As far as camera settings go, there is NO difference whatsoever between colour and monochrome, whether digital or film. A scene that requires a given exposure with black and white film will require the same exposure shot in digital/colour. The difference between a 1/60th/sec SS and 30 seconds is roughly 10 stops, or the difference between correct and completely blown/black.

 

[wfooshee]

^^^What he said. Exposure is no different.

If you're shooting digital and converting to monochrome, there's more to it than just turning the saturation down, though. Here's a shot of Yosemite Falls I took back in March 2013. It being Yosemite, I wanted to go all Ansel Adams with it. (As if I could...)

This is with the saturation zeroed out, no color. Yes, it's now black and white, but dang, it's dull!

Photoshop lets you adjust the levels of primary and secondary colors while you convert to black and white, with Image --> Adjust --> Black and White. You get sliders for red, yellow, green, blue, cyan, and magenta. Experimented a bit, ended up dropping cyan and blue rather sharply, red a good bit, and bumped yellow up quite hard, ended up with this. Cyan and blue dropping gave me the sky. Turning red down gave me the rock face, and turning yellow up gave me the trees. Yes, yellow, not green! There is NO brightness/contrast or levels adjustment between the two monochromes, although I did have to brush out some pixellation that happened in the sky when the blue and cyan came down. The tool also lets you tone the image, with a full range of saturation and tint adjustment for the applied tone, if you want something like sepia. I'm not showing that here, though.

And some subjects are so close to monochrome, you just go with it. This is a full-color image:

 

[stevet1]

^^^What he said. Exposure is no different.

If I shoot in monochrome, do I have to adjust the settings, such as aperture or film speed?
Is say a 30 second exposure any different than a 1/60th of a second?

Steve Thomas

Settings recommendations are actually kind of hard to find. After looking at a half a dozen web sites, the closest I've come is one person who said that if you are shooting longer than 1/60th of a second, you should use a tripod.

OK, that's nice.

There's a lot of info about fixing your photo in post production, but what kinds of recommendations would you give for actually taking the shot.
I visited one site where the author said, "You don't shoot in monochrome, you shoot for monochrome."
Monochrome is all about composition and the stark lines between bright and shadow.

I thought his site was very comtemplative.

Steve Thomas

 

[Derrel]

I like to shoot in raw plus JPEG mode, which gives you a Full color raw file, and a monochrome JPEG. You can adjust the number of image parameters to make really good straight out of camera JPEG images. With my older Canon cameras I used to shoot a lot this way,with the JPEG parameters adjusted to the following:color toning,sepia;sharpness set pretty high, filter effect yellow filter; size,medium;quality fine. This gave beautiful roughly 4 megapixel jpegs straight of camera. the camera that I used the most this waythis way was my 8.2 megapixel 20D,and I shot a lot of photos this way. The beauty of as I said is that the Raw data is in full color, and the other beauty is that you can see how the picture looks in the fieldin black-and-whiteon the camera rear display. As was mentioned above you don't shoot in monochrome,you shoot for monochrome. lighting is different and subject matter and composition that looks great in black-and-white is somewhat different in many cases than that which is ideal for color.

 

[Derrel]

I think that if you want to end up with a Monochrome photo that it really helps to see the picture in the field on the rear display of the camera in black-and-white. Certain subjects and certain types of pictures look great in monochrome. Pictures that deal with lines,shapes, masses,and textures Often look great in monochrome, and lighting that looks good in monochrome is often of a higher lighting ratio than looks good in color. As a poster mentioned above, you don't shoot in monochrome, you shoot for monochrome.Color mixing in Photoshop or color filter effects in Lightroom both give quite a bit of added drama to many photos.

 

[zulu42]

If I shoot in monochrome, do I have to adjust the settings, such as aperture or film speed?
Is say a 30 second exposure any different than a 1/60th of a second?

Steve Thomas

Hi Steve, I can tell by a few posts that you are interested in taking photography to the next level and taking control of your camera and settings.
I think you should begin by gaining a good understanding of the basics of exposure as well as the terminology used. In your post above, there is no setting for film speed on any digital camera, and an exposure made with a shutter speed of 30 seconds will give a vastly different result than an exposure made with a shutter speed of 1/60 of one second.
A great book that has helped a lot of us is "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson.
Search out some articles or tutorials about the "Exposure Triangle". While the "Exposure Triangle" with aperture, shutter speed and ISO is quite imperfect, I think it's a good place to start - getting predictable exposures while manipulating each setting for desired effect.

 

[Designer]

If I shoot in monochrome, do I have to adjust the settings, such as aperture or film speed?

No, but I thought you were using a digital camera, not a film camera.

BTW: if you really want to get into B&W photography, do it with a film camera and B&W film. Digital conversion to a B&W image is a compromise at best, whereas with real B&W film, you can get right to it.

Older film cameras can be purchased at substantially reduced prices these days.

 

[stevet1]

Hi Steve, I can tell by a few posts that you are interested in taking photography to the next level and taking control of your camera and settings.

Zulu42,

Thank you, yes.
I just recently moved from film to digital and am learning that there's a whole world of possibilities.
I'm reading articles and visiting web sites, and coming here to learn too.
I'm also learning my way around my camera as well.
I'm using FD lenses on a Canon EF body, so it forces me to learn about the triangle.
Just this morning I got to wondering if I can take black and white movies and what I need to do to accomplish that.
I want to do more than just point and shoot. It's all new.

Steve Thomas

 

[Grandpa Ron]

My Canon rebel only requires the selection of monochrome from the menu. All other features stay the same.

Many times I will shoot in color, then desaturate in post processing for b&w.

 

[stevet1]

My Canon rebel only requires the selection of monochrome from the menu. All other features stay the same.

Many times I will shoot in color, then desaturate in post processing for b&w.

Ron,

Thank you, yes, I learned how to get to the monochrome setting after choosing the movie option and then using the menu button.
It's awesome.

Steve Thomas

 

[stevet1]

I learned how to get to the monochrome setting after choosing the movie option and then using the menu button.
It's awesome.

Steve Thomas

I took a short movie and transferred it to my computer. Using a video to jpg converter program, I separated out the individual frames. One of the frames was this one. In the process, I realized I was driving around with my gas cap off!
OMG *grin*

Steve Thomas

 

[Soocom1]

I wrote about this before, but here is part of it again.

The "pseudo-monochrome" as I call it is a denaturation digitally of the image.
When put through the digital processing program (typically the program that came with the camera) you will see that the setting will have listed "monochrome".
This is especially true with Canon and Phase One.
I do not know if Nikon does the same.

Irregardless, the camera is still recording in color, but set the image to monochrome.
To prove this, simply change the image to a color based setting and the image will come out in color.

I shot several images before with the B&W setting and then put a red filter on the lens, and voila, when changing the image in the PP the red color popped up.

I wont say peruse this unless your a glutton for punishment and scorn, but if you shoot old school style with modern digital (with a B&W colored filter) in front of the lens, the rendering is far more to that of the old school style than not. This is because the image is actually recording the red spectrum over other colors and the monochrome-ing of the image in the camera will show a truer to life image.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Like any new area you start out walking before you run. Since the camera photo receptors only record color you get monochrome by electronically desaturating the image.

Then you can use the post processing to adjust the brightness and contrast. Usually with the histogram function. This is a fairly easy to learn and gives some really nice result.

Next it is time to go down the rabbit hole and take on the finery of monochrome in post processing. For instance, you can add color filters electronically prior to desaturation or you can go old school and add a color filters over the lens. This and other techniques are used to enhance monochrome; or as I like to call it, Black and White.

Good luck,