Does Anyone Use B&W Mode on their Camera?

[Jason Dunn]

I was looking at this Canon Picture Style (http://photoworkshop.com/canon/picturestyle/shooting/monochrome.html) page, and it got me thinking about something: almost every digital camera on the market today has modes for black and white, sepia, and other non-full-colour modes. I never use such modes, and caution others against using them for one simple reason: it's easy to take a colour image and convert it to B&W, but impossible to take a B&W image and get a 100% accurate colour from it. My hunch is that these modes are just for marketing purposes more than reality.

For the experts out there, is the B&W capture mode inside the camera somehow superior to the software conversion one would do in Photoshop Elements or a similar program? I haven't seen any evidence of that, but I haven't done any A/B comparisons either. I'm interested in hearing from people who use these modes, and why.

[cameron]

Black and White modes are there for people who don't know how to, or don't want to do, post processing of their images.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm not going to give up the creative control over my image. There's so much that goes into a successful black and white conversion - and so much of it is the asthetic that the photographer is looking to have.

Historically the in camera settings have really been designed for people who expect to get good, usable shots straight out of the camera. At least with picture styles you can specify a filter effect for the conversion - which is different that the traditional, straight grayscale conversion that most cameras used to do.

I hadn't looked at the picture styles in much detail until just now. It does look like you can apply them in post to your raw images, which means that you may be able to get some good post-processing without spending the amount of time it currently takes.

The more I shoot with digital the more I like my medium format Mamiyas. I get great shots that emphasize my skills as a photographer, not as a photoshopper. Don't get me wrong, I love the flexibility that my 20D gives me, but for those critical shots and settings I use both digital and film. Maybe that's what the picture styles are trying to do - allow me to mimic the effect of different films (landscape looks to be a Fuji Velvia equivalent) without spending hours in photoshop.

[Jon Westfall]

I've always seen these modes as purely marketing. Any serious photographer will favor post-processing, and the "cool" factor of these modes is pretty big on digital cam newbies. I remember playing around with an old Digital Mavica in 2000 that had these features - we had never seen digital cameras before and, hence, thought neat things like that were exceptionally cool. Now I can honestly say I don't have the slightest idea how to even access those modes on my 7590 - I could find them if I wanted, but haven't used them once since buying the thing.

I suppose if it sells the device, and serious photographers simply ignore it, the feature will stay in our cams.

[marlof]

In fact, there's people who crave for a B&W only camera. There's something special about seeing your result in B&W, and also, you can tweak the sensor to do B&W only. Kodak used to offer B&W cameras, and in a review on Luminous Landscape (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/kodak-760m.shtml), you can read why it was very much liked by some.

In some cameras, you can shoot B&W JPEGs together with a RAW image. The RAW will contain all colors, but your native JPEG will have a B&W rendering. I'd like to use that, but my E-1 only has PASM settings. No B&W whatsoever. So I use the channel mixer in Photoshop.

[Leon]

The PC is probably more able to handle the conversion than an in-camera processor / algorithm and doing it on the PC gives a lot more flexibility. But there's more - here's an interesting article about converting to 16 bits before converting to B/W. (Obviously, this cannot be done in-camera at all).
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/16_bit_black_and_white.html

[bcries]

I use it, but mainly because it is nice to see what an image would look like immediately on the camera. I do feel a bit like I'm waisting information, but maybe similar logic might lead one to always take pictures zoomed all the way out, because hey, you can always crop (???)

Okay okay, the analogy doesn't quite work when it comes to resolution loss during cropping... and I guess if you shot RAW all the time, a B&W setting wouldn't actually waste information (you could get the colour back, right?).

What would be nice, for those of us with smaller storage cards, is if cameras would provide a quick "B&W Preview" when reviewing images - allowing us to apply these conversions to colour JPG's without actually rewriting the images on the storage card. Lord knows cameras have enough RAM to pull that off these days :)

Come to think of it, my Olympus E-500 allows this, sort of - when you convert a colour JPG to B&W or sepia directly on the camera, it actually creates a fresh copy on the card, leaving the original (colour) shot intact. Not ideal when you're running out of card space, though...

*sigh* I should just get a bigger storage card :)

[Jason Dunn]

In some cameras, you can shoot B&W JPEGs together with a RAW image.

That would be an interesting option - the best of both worlds.

One thing about B&W is that I often forget to try it. As in, I have a whole bunch of images, but I tend to leave them as colour and neglect converting them to B&W to see how they'd look.

[SassKwatch]

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm not going to give up the creative control over my image. There's so much that goes into a successful black and white conversion ....

Ditto.

[SassKwatch]

In fact, there's people who crave for a B&W only camera.

I would absolutely be one of those had I not become somewhat comfortable converting color shots in P'shop. B&W can be a great learning tool.....in addition to just plain being better for some shots.

I almost passed by processing this shot (http://www.fotollery.com/content/view/106/61/) until I converted it to B&W. By contrast, I wouldn't like this one (http://www.fotollery.com/content/view/107/60/) nearly as well if not for the color.

[aro]

Simple.
When I want a black and white picture I want to shoot it in B/W to control the black, the white and all the greys into the picture. It could sounds obvious but I don't want to guess what the red scarf in the scene could do beside that blue hat. A bright red can end up as dark as the darkest area of the pictures.

B/W = no surprises.

aro

[cameron]

B/W = no surprises.

aro,

I may be misinterpreting your post - but I just wanted to respond. Typically, the b&w mode in your camera will give you surprises, as you may not know how the camera handles the conversion to grayscale.

The easiest and most often quoted example is sky and clouds. In many cases the overall brightness of the blue may be very similar to the overall brightness in the clouds. It's not intuitive, but it's often the case. This means that a straight grayscale conversion would convert both the clouds and the sky to a very similar gray - reducing the impact of the shot. This is why film photographers heavily rely on filters when shooting b&w. A red filter darkens the sky while keeping the clouds light.

Why is this important in digital? When capturing a color image you capture the full range of values in the red, green, and blue channels. You can then use the information contained in the various channels to enhance your image when you process it. If I want to emphasize the sky, I can apply a red filter. If I want to lighten the foliage, I'll apply a dark green filter. The beauty of digital is that I can apply these filters to selected parts of the image (granted, if you're not careful this can through off the overall look). I can also apply these filters after capture, so I can experiment with different conversions. Many times when shooting black and white I'll bracket using different filters, as I may not be fully sure which filter I want to use (I haven't been shooting B&W that long, so I'm still learning).

Here's some examples. These images are straight off the RAW files on my laptop - I haven't done any other post processing. Unfortunately the eye doesn't see much difference when you look at these side by side, if you really want to see the difference save them and then arrow through them in Windows Picture Viewer. The first image is a straight grayscale conversion, using the Canon EOSViewer defaults (which I assume would be the same as the camera's B&W mode). Not a bad shot.

http://www.scaldedmonkeys.com/FM/India_None.JPG

Here's the image with a green filter applied. Not really much change. The Taj is whiter and some of the foliage is a bit lighter.

http://www.scaldedmonkeys.com/FM/India_Green.JPG

And then a red filter. My favorite, the contrast between the Taj and the sky is emphasized, although some of the detail in the Taj is lost.

http://www.scaldedmonkeys.com/FM/India_Red.JPG

Only me as the photographer can look at these and see what I envisioned when I took the shot.

Sorry for the long-winded reply. Hopefully I didn't misread your post and you were really agreeing with me :).