Shooting in Color Or Black & White

[Suhit Gupta]

There was a simple statement over at PhotographyBLOG - "Colour or Black and White?" and I find it to be a very good question. Several years ago, I bought a dozen or so rolls of film and I happened to pick up one black & white roll by mistake. Of course, being too lazy to go and return it, I just ended up using it and was quite surprised by the excellent results that I got back. So I bought some more rolls and was generally happy with the experience.

However, since I have started using digital cameras, I haven't dabbled in any B&W photography directly at the camera level. I have used Photoshop to convert images from RGB to Grayscale, but it just doesn't feel the same. So I guess my question to all of you is, do you prefer shooting in color or black & white (whether on film or digital)? And if you have samples to show a particularly good comparison, feel free to post.

[Godsongz]

Like you I have photoshopped several color digital images into the world of B&W, but have never even considered doing so at the camera level. I'm not even sure if I can, or if I'd want to. Those few that I have converted in post-production have worked much better as B&W than color, but I think I'd still want that original color image.

[Doug Johnson]

I have done B&W using both film and digital. Both have advantages, but more and more I find myself using digital.

I really like the ability to control the mix of Red, Green, and Blue in the final B&W image. You can do the same thing with film using filters, but you are limited to whatever colors you might have, and you can't really tell for sure exactly what the final image will look like. By doing the conversion in Photoshop, you can get the perfect balance (if you know how to use the various tools that it offers).

B&W images do have a certain sophistication to them that color seems to lack at times, and occasionally the only easy way to rescue a picture with goofy colors is to convert it to B&W.

Its true that a digital B&W won't be quite as sharp as film, but the resolution on most digital cameras is so good these days that unless you are doing really big enlargements, you'll probably never know the diffference.

[aro]

This a very good question but is it the right one?

My girl friend prefer black in white pictures and she always buy b/w
film for her non-digital camera. I just showed her how to shoot in black and white with my digital camera(Canon s30) and she finally realized(women can be so slow with digital stuff some time ;>) that she could look
at what she was shooting in black and white before shooting it.

Black and white shooting is, in my opinion, an art by itself. Some magazine are dedicated to b/w photography. Some photograph are specialized in b/w shooting.

Colors arent anything but tones in b/w shooting. A bright red apple can become a dull grey fruit if the photograph does not take in consideration the scene lighting. You can buid the best lighting environment with colors in mind and have the worst results in b/w. A photographer needs to "see" in b/w if he does b/w photography.

I was hungry but these grey strawberries on the shelf does not appeal me!

aro

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I'd like to add that so far there isn't a simple way to convert a colour digital to something that looks like it was from Tech Pan.. so sometimes there is still an advantage to B&W film.

[Montego]

Silver Oxide makes some PS filters that simulate Pan-X Tri-X etc. I haven't used them myself, but I've read good comments:

http://www.silveroxide.com/

I've shot some B&W with my digital cam, but I'm finding I really like shooting in-camera Sepia tone for certain subjects.

Anyway here is a page with a few examples that I've shot:

http://www.scoca-k12.org/info/pics.htm