Color is incredibly seductive. In my first photography text book, there was a picture of tomato soup in a pretty green bowl with a sprig of basil on the surface of the soup. It was a lovely picture. And then it was converted to black and white. Guess what...BORING. Why? Because red and green (essentially) represent the same value of gray. What had great contrast in color, it had almost no contrast in tone and yielded a very flat image.
To give you some context, for the last 6 months, I've shot almost exclusively B&W film, and prior to that, was shooting B&W film side-by-side with digital.
If you really want to get a crash course on this, and you can shoot in RAW+JPEG, try this experiment. Set your camera to shoot in B&W. Since you're shooting in RAW, you're still getting all of the data (as camera setting such as monochrome and white balance only impact the JPEGs). Then go out and shoot as much stuff with colors next to each other as possible. Don't worry about getting great shots. But think about really colorful playgroud equipment, or toys, or cars, etc. and shoot a bunch of pictures of colorful scenes. Then bring your RAW and JPEG images into your software (Bridge, Lightroom, Aperture, etc). You don't have to open them; just view large thumbnails or previews so that you can see the two images next to/near each other. You will quickly get an idea of how colors translate to black and white in relation to each other and common surroundings. Try it...really. If you think it sounds like a lot of work, believe me, it's way less time than taking a bunch a pictures you think are going to look great, only to find out they are tomato soup in a green bowl.
@gwhit123 probably nothing wrong but if you aren't happy with the color you can try one of two things. 1. Try setting you white balance on your camera before you take photos. Most cameras default to automatic white balance (AWB). 2. Shoot in RAW. To me this is the preferred option as you can tweak the color after the fact but it does come with some drawbacks the biggest being file size. Also, you will need software that will allow you to edit RAW images. Let me know if this helps at all. Good luck!!
@egad thanks. To be honest i havnt teies raw yet because it scares me a little. I try to play with the white balance in camera to not much avail. It may be the time of year as well - most of my photos are taken inside under energy saving lightbulbs. But i just feel a connection to b+w i dont with color.
@gwhit123 it is funny because I was scared of RAW for so long too. The thing I didn't realize was that when you shoot in RAW your camera also saves the jpg version so you always have that to fall back on. Let me know if you try it.
Oh I am on the same situation. Indoor shots in bad light because it is dark out at 5pm. :(
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@egad
To give you some context, for the last 6 months, I've shot almost exclusively B&W film, and prior to that, was shooting B&W film side-by-side with digital.
If you really want to get a crash course on this, and you can shoot in RAW+JPEG, try this experiment. Set your camera to shoot in B&W. Since you're shooting in RAW, you're still getting all of the data (as camera setting such as monochrome and white balance only impact the JPEGs). Then go out and shoot as much stuff with colors next to each other as possible. Don't worry about getting great shots. But think about really colorful playgroud equipment, or toys, or cars, etc. and shoot a bunch of pictures of colorful scenes. Then bring your RAW and JPEG images into your software (Bridge, Lightroom, Aperture, etc). You don't have to open them; just view large thumbnails or previews so that you can see the two images next to/near each other. You will quickly get an idea of how colors translate to black and white in relation to each other and common surroundings. Try it...really. If you think it sounds like a lot of work, believe me, it's way less time than taking a bunch a pictures you think are going to look great, only to find out they are tomato soup in a green bowl.
Oh I am on the same situation. Indoor shots in bad light because it is dark out at 5pm. :(