Just wondering if there is a better way for some reason to get black & white photos (& sepia). Do you shoot from camera in B&W or just shoot all colour, then post-process later if you want it in B&W?
I was thinking if I shoot all colour, I then have the option later.
I agree it's best to shoot in colour and convert in software.
I see you have a Canon. I have Nikon, so not sure if it's the same, but my camera gives me three options:
1) Shoot JPG with Picture Style (Nikon term is Picture Control) set to Monochrome. You can adjust some settings, but you get one JPG shot and no ability to do much with it later (you can't decide to make the greens brighter because there aren't any greens anymore, it's all shades of grey)
2) Shoot JPG in normal color, but use in-camera editing to make a monochrome version (my camera duplicates the image so you still have the colour version). Still pretty bland most times.
3) Shoot in colour and do B&W conversion in post processing. The advantage to this is you can (in most software) play with sliders for each color and adjust the lightness/darkness of each colour, red, magenta, yellow, blue, cyan, green etc). This lets you make drastic changes to the image, can make all the difference. If you want to make a really nice B&W image this is the way to go.
4) Ok I lied, 4 options. And this one is the best. The fourth is to shoot RAW + JPG. Set Picture Style to monochrome. This will display the image as B&W on your LCD. It will create a monochrome JPG. But the RAW file will retain all the colour information (in fact your post processing software probably won't be aware of the Picture Style and will assume it's full colour) You can do the B&W conversion in photoshop, lightroom, picnic or whatever. But you have that B&W JPG you can preview to get an idea what it will look like.
Just because I love stiring you all up...Shoot B&W...lots of B&W. It'll do more to improve your eye and your composition than anything else you can do. You don't have to keep the pics, but it's great training. (Also ALL digital cameras take crap B&Ws)
Thankyou @beautifulthing@mikew@ariananeala@webfoot@swilde
A friend mentioned shooting in RAW the other day. Should check & make sure I'm doing that now!
I have Photoshop & have seen how changing to B&W I can adjust each colour. So that seems the way to go.
Thanks again!
I do find it interesting to shoot in b&w (some cameras have a b&w raw mode, incidentally), because it does make you shoot differently, like Sue said above. But, also like Sue said (minus those few cameras that shoot b&w raw), in-camera digital b&w sucks. I've even tried jazzing them up with filters (red, orange etc) and it doesn't do much to help things.
When I learned photography and darkroom, all I shot was b&w, so I have a certain love for it. But, even though the film itself was b&w film, I still got to choose the process afterward - cool or warm paper etc - and that made a huge difference to the final images. The only way to control things that well with digital is to shoot raw, which (usually) happens to be colour-only.
If you're seriously into b&w you should definitely shoot raw, but you can still get good results from a colour jpeg because you have three colour channels to work with
I do a mixture of all three. :D If I've got time available for editing I'll use RAW. If I'm not sure if I'll want it colour or B&W I'll shoot colour but if I do my water shots of my boys I'll shoot with the camera's B&W setting, just because I've found through experimenting that gives the better results imo.
I do remember reading an article last year about B&W photography and they said that you should always shoot in colour and then convert if not using the RAW route.
I shoot in RAW and colour, then I post-process for B&W. And even better: try to "see" it B&W before shooting, in other words take your shot with the plan to make it B&W, by doing so you will think about more details that will work (or won't work) when you convert to B&W. It doesn't mean a shot that what initially planned for colour will be bad in B&W, though. Setting B&W on your cam could help you visualize how it will be in B&W, but that's it. The conversion made by my camera when I set it to B&W is bad, I never use it and prefer to convert it post-shooting.
I have no idea if I shoot in RAW or JPG but I frequently shoot in black and white because I like to take pictures SOOC and because then I can see on the screen what I want it to look like :] I find B&W works much better if you have strong lights and shadows xxx
I find if you try shooting in black and white you look for different things. Shape, shadow, texture, pattern. Probably better way to train the eye in the long run.
@miley89 I agree with you on the feel of your B&W images if you are shooting off the camera in B&W but RAW/colour and post processing is the way to go. Really don't want to miss that great colour shot while stuck in B&W mode.
To proof the advantage of shooting color photos, I will show a color photo which I converted to different jpg's, pushing and stopping different colors in Lightroom:
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I see you have a Canon. I have Nikon, so not sure if it's the same, but my camera gives me three options:
1) Shoot JPG with Picture Style (Nikon term is Picture Control) set to Monochrome. You can adjust some settings, but you get one JPG shot and no ability to do much with it later (you can't decide to make the greens brighter because there aren't any greens anymore, it's all shades of grey)
2) Shoot JPG in normal color, but use in-camera editing to make a monochrome version (my camera duplicates the image so you still have the colour version). Still pretty bland most times.
3) Shoot in colour and do B&W conversion in post processing. The advantage to this is you can (in most software) play with sliders for each color and adjust the lightness/darkness of each colour, red, magenta, yellow, blue, cyan, green etc). This lets you make drastic changes to the image, can make all the difference. If you want to make a really nice B&W image this is the way to go.
4) Ok I lied, 4 options. And this one is the best. The fourth is to shoot RAW + JPG. Set Picture Style to monochrome. This will display the image as B&W on your LCD. It will create a monochrome JPG. But the RAW file will retain all the colour information (in fact your post processing software probably won't be aware of the Picture Style and will assume it's full colour) You can do the B&W conversion in photoshop, lightroom, picnic or whatever. But you have that B&W JPG you can preview to get an idea what it will look like.
A friend mentioned shooting in RAW the other day. Should check & make sure I'm doing that now!
I have Photoshop & have seen how changing to B&W I can adjust each colour. So that seems the way to go.
Thanks again!
I do find it interesting to shoot in b&w (some cameras have a b&w raw mode, incidentally), because it does make you shoot differently, like Sue said above. But, also like Sue said (minus those few cameras that shoot b&w raw), in-camera digital b&w sucks. I've even tried jazzing them up with filters (red, orange etc) and it doesn't do much to help things.
When I learned photography and darkroom, all I shot was b&w, so I have a certain love for it. But, even though the film itself was b&w film, I still got to choose the process afterward - cool or warm paper etc - and that made a huge difference to the final images. The only way to control things that well with digital is to shoot raw, which (usually) happens to be colour-only.
I do remember reading an article last year about B&W photography and they said that you should always shoot in colour and then convert if not using the RAW route.