Black & white in camera?

[greymayne]

Contrary to what I've read and been told, the tutor on a seascape class last evening advocated taking B&W 'in camera' (Raw+JPEG) rather than post adjustment on the basis 'you can see what you're getting and adjust on the spot'.
I'm guessing there's never going to be a right or wrong on this, but I'd appreciate some thoughts from both camps.
Thanks.

[Papathanassi]

Re: Black & white in camera?

One mans opinion, most replies you get will be to shoot colour. How can you really see what your getting on such a small LCD anyway? And that's just my opinion.

Papa.

[secondintime]

Re: Black & white in camera?

Agreed, most will say colour. I sometimes convert to B&W in camera (60D) if I want to check what photo may come out like.

[Sandra]

Re: Black & white in camera?

I used to shoot JPeg but found much greater flexibility shooting RAW, but if you feel it necessary just shoot RAW+JPEG's for a while and see what works. It would be a shame to burn your bridges and just go JPEG, adjust your in camera settings for contrast etc and find that on the big screen you had miss judged things. Though if you shoot RAW and set it to Mono on the camera you will see on the screen a mono version as you would a jpeg, but with all the flexibility.

[SamFisher]

Re: Black & white in camera?

I took part in this year's Practical Photography DSLR course.
Module 1 was to take an image with your camera set to B/W + Jpeg.
I hadn't tried this before but was quite surprised with the results.


Woodside House by mike.stephen99 (catching up), on Flickr

[SamFisher]

Re: Black & white in camera?

BTW, I've never tried it since - I always convert a colour image for my mono shots.

Mike

[S_J_P]

Black & white in camera?

I was taught that in order to take a good B&W image, you had to "see" in B&W as the components which make up the image are different to those of a colour image (tones rather than shades, shapes, textures, and high contrast). It was therefore preferable to set out to take a monochrome image than to take a colour one and convert it. Conversely, a B&W image usually contains sufficient content to convert to colour successfully.

Following this advice whenever I'm shooting for mono I use the monochrome preset and select filtration incamera, this allows me to immerse myself in the monochrome world and compose for mono.

I also subscribe to the adage that its best to get it as right as possible in-camera, I think this extends to the image being monochrome, and any filtration required being applied at the capture stage. Unfortunately, LR/PS/PE "lose" this info when imported, but DPP retains the settings and imports mono images with any adjustments you've selected.

I'm sure that like everything which contains an element of artistic merit there will be divided opinion, but the theory seems sound and it works for me so that's the way I work!

[greymayne]

Re: Black & white in camera?

Thanks for all the replies. To be honest, I hadn't realized how much can be done 'in camera'.

[chodeva]

Re: Black & white in camera?

this is a subject i have been intently looking at because of my love for mono shots. while shooting in mono may allow you to see what the image will look like immediately, post processing will achieve much better results (post-processing of raw files that is). even if you do in-camera filtration..in my experience the images are flatter than when you spend a bit more time converting a colour into mono - software offers much more control...no different from the darkroom of old

[S_J_P]

Black & white in camera?

I completely agree that post-processing, especially for monochrome images is miles better than in-camera processing, but I'd still like the camera output to be close to the end result as possible, and this (for me) includes being monochrome.

As mentioned previously, I also find that a monochrome review image and/or live-view image helps me see and visualise in monochrome, and this helps compose a monochrome shot differently to a colour one