Some questions about black and white photography

[Docderm]

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Hi, all

I am an SL color shooter who has just acquired the original version of the monochrom m 18 MP camera. I want to try my hand at B&W with a camera dedicated to that process. 

 

So, it is time for me to brush up my skills and knowledge about B&W and would really appreciate your input. 

 

1) Is there any role for the Passport Colorchecker proceedure....since there is no "color"

When using my SL I use the Colorchecker in each lighting situation to optimize color accuracy. What happens when we have no "colors"? I would assume no role....but???

 

2) There is a common saying that color photography is best at daybreak and end of day; while B&W photography is good also in mid day. Is this right? Why is it true? 

One of the attractions to me of B&W is that it increases the time in which I can take good pictures. 

Is the explanation for this phenomenon that while color photography images are influenced by the color temperature of the light illuminating the scene/subjects, B&W images are not influenced? B&W only records the luminance of the scene/subjects and is independent of the color temperature of the illuminating light? 

 

For example: If you photograph in B&W on the m Monochrom an orange as your subject under a range of illuminating light temperatures but always same intensity will the orange look the same in all the images? 

 

3) Online resources you recommend for a newbie like me? 

 

4) Advice on color filters to use? Which do you find useful under what circumstances? 

 

Thanks! I am sure I will come up with more questions as I get more actual experience,,,,,i.e. run into unexpected situations

 

DocDerm

Edited April 14, 2017 by Docderm

[mmradman]

A little study of basics may be a good start, nothing beats a good book in that respect, the first one I read as a kid was published back in 1960 and had few pictures so I suggest something more contemporary, just a suggestion as I have no idea how good this book may be, see link, maybe a visit to local library.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Black-White-Photography-Walmsley/dp/1781450870/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492206391&sr=1-1&keywords=black+and+white+photography+books

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[pico]

 

I am an SL color shooter who has just acquired the original version of the monochrom m 18 MP camera. I want to try my hand at B&W with a camera dedicated to that process. 

 

So, it is time for me to brush up my skills and knowledge about B&W and would really appreciate your input. 

 

1) Is there any role for the Passport Colorchecker proceedure....since there is no "color"

 

 

No

 

 

There is a common saying that color photography is best at daybreak and end of day; while B&W photography is good also in mid day. Is this right?

 

 

It is not true

 

 

Advice on color filters to use? Which do you find useful under what circumstances?

 

 

My opinion forget the monochrome camera and be happy with, for example, Photoshop's conversions from color to mono.

 

[250swb]

Just use it. If you want guidance forget all the trivia you are asking about and get a few books of actual B&W photographs in the genre you prefer, Bresson, Adams, Weston, Gibson, etc. and follow your nose. You are just going to kill the spontaneity if you go out of your way to destroy the situation. I mean, really, you use a Colorchecker for every new lighting situation? Dump that as well.

Edited April 15, 2017 by 250swb

[a.noctilux]

DocDerm, my advice is "practice with fun" to learn your new Monochrom.

 

As long time color photography only, I had never "b&w skill" but when I bougt Monochrom three years ago, I learn hard to earn "b&w skill" by practice.

Read so many books (photo and "b&w technics") but reading only those books without practice could not help, for me.

 

Just try to "see in b&w" (very hard for newbie like me), abstracting colors is not easy work.

 

Color filters can help, but may be disturbing at first.

When one knows that the color filter clears-up same color, things become easy (but how about other colors ?).

 

So practice with fun then you would see in b&w and you may take time to do and master your Monochrom.

 

Arnaud

Edited April 15, 2017 by a.noctilux

[Lummilux]

Hi, all...

 

I recently bought a used M9M... With the APO 50 in I my opinion a lifetime combo... 

 

but in general i´m often asking myself, what is a good black and white picture...

Any thoughts?

 

Greets

Andy

[Herr Barnack]

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...

2) There is a common saying that color photography is best at daybreak and end of day; while B&W photography is good also in mid day. Is this right? Why is it true? 

One of the attractions to me of B&W is that it increases the time in which I can take good pictures. 

Is the explanation for this phenomenon that while color photography images are influenced by the color temperature of the light illuminating the scene/subjects, B&W images are not influenced? B&W only records the luminance of the scene/subjects and is independent of the color temperature of the illuminating light? 

...

 

 

Every digital camera and every film emulsion has its limits in terms of exposure latitude.  Exceed those limits and you will have blown out highlights, blocked up black shadows or both. 

 

Uniform lighting is the key; the more uniform the light, the better your exposure results will be.  You can shoot at high noon and get good results as long as half your subject is not in direct sunlight and half is in the shadows.  Same thing with indoor or artificial lighting - you want uniform lighting.  When you can't get uniform lighting naturally, you can get it by using artificial methods - a reflector or flash.  Off camera flash with some sort of flash modifier diffuser or bounced flash gives very good results when you learn some basic techniques.  Reflectors work well too, but usually require an assistant to position them or a reflector stand to hold them while you make photographs.

 

Knowing how to meter effectively is also a critical skill when it comes to getting good exposure.  Learning to use your camera's meter correctly is a must.

 

As far as the color temperature of light, that is only an issue with color photography.  Whether shooting with a Monochrom v.1, Monochrom typ 246 or a film M with black and white film,  light is light.  That is one of the great things about black and white photography, regardless of the camera or film emulsion you are using.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Carlos Danger

[geotrupede]

because you do not have colour, all you are left with is shadows, texture, contrast.

so you need to look for this and imagine how pictures will look like.

for example use orange filter to spice up the sky when it is blue

or use flash to make your subjects stand out of a dark world

Look for shadows, deep blacks, use contrast in post.

Do not be scared of blacks, do no try to tone map the full range of luminance...

Some inspiration here:

Klein

Brandt

Moriyama

Ray

Gilden

Jonathan Auch

 

...

[250swb]

Hi, all...

 

I recently bought a used M9M... With the APO 50 in I my opinion a lifetime combo... 

 

but in general i´m often asking myself, what is a good black and white picture...

Any thoughts?

 

Greets

Andy

 

Good post by geotrupede above, look at photography and see how other photographers use B&W and even technical perfection in something like an Edward Weston print creates emotion in the lines and tones of the simplest object or landscape. But technical perfection is not needed for a great B&W photograph, it is all about the subject matter that you are getting to the heart of by stripping away colour. A simple tip, the files straight from the MM are lacking in contrast and oomph, they are a bit boring tonally, get used to doing some post processing and make the images your own.

[earleygallery]

Hi, all...

 

I recently bought a used M9M... With the APO 50 in I my opinion a lifetime combo...

 

but in general i´m often asking myself, what is a good black and white picture...

Any thoughts?

 

Greets

Andy

A good B&W photo is one that you like.

[Chuck Albertson]

The absence of the Bayer array facilitates blown highlights with the MM, so do not "expose to the right." Watch the histogram on the back; after a second or so, it shows the histogram from the RAW file. Try not to dump too much into the two partitions on the right side of the histogram. You can recover a ton of detail from the shadows.

 

I usually have a medium-yellow filter on mine. The sensor reacts very similarly to panchromatic film, and the yellow filter corrects tones in most kinds of light without adding too much contrast.

 

Just for starters, Michael Freeman's "Field Guide to Black-and-White Photography" https://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Photography-Field-Guide/dp/0415833515/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1492489697&sr=8-2&keywords=michael+freeman+black+and+white is compact and informative. Much of it is directed at converting color shots, but you'll find a lot of information in it and it's not expensive or a pain to carry.

[JonPB]

Doc,

 

I'm in a writing mood, and you ask some questions that make me think, so I'm going to see how well I understand these issues by attempting to provide answers. I'm no expert, so this is all in my humble and perhaps naive opinion. :-)

 

Shooting reference patches strikes me as just as useful for color work as black and white, which is to say it is usually an esoteric practice with minimal marginal gains, but in certain applications can become essential. The purpose of shooting a reference in the first place is to maximize accuracy from input through to output. For technical accuracy, your color reference sheet likely includes several grayscale patches, and you can use these to verify exposure and contrast curves for whatever processing, previewing, and final product that your workflow entails. High-precision black and white imaging can require the use of hundreds of grayscale patches to linearize and verify the repeatability of computer monitors, soft proofing, and printing. But with black and white, adjusting the contrast curves to a less accurate but more evocative image is standard practice, so technical accuracy from the camera to the screen isn't usually a priority, though from screen to print it often is. Perhaps shooting reference patches at different exposure levels will help you gain a sense of how much latitude you have to work with given your personal standards for noise and such.

 

The important thing is that most people respond to color inaccuracies much more strongly than to luminance inaccuracies: a face rendered in color will take very little green or magenta, for example, to appear "off," while the same subject in grayscale could be much lighter or darker than strictly accurate before it seems "off." One of the things that I adore about working in black and white is this wide creative latitude, which is both a blessing (for those who want to manipulate it) and a potential hurdle (like with any other tool, e.g. sharpening, it is easy to go overboard without realizing it, but practice and critical reviews help one develop their personal style). 

 

The patches of color can also be useful in determining how a camera system responds to different colors. As far as I can tell, every film and sensor interprets light differently, and this includes black and white media. The M9 Monochrom and the M240 Monochrom are subtly different, and shooting test colors might allow one to gain insight into how they compare, if one is so inclined. More practically, if using color filters, one can shoot reference color patterns to learn how a given filter might interpret a given scene, which helps anticipate what the captured image will look like. 

 

In practice, I'd recommend shooting test patterns and calibrating workflows to the same degree as they are necessary for color photography, where my standard is "only do it if you have a specific problem to fix, then do it only to the degree necessary to fix that problem." While some find the pursuit of technical perfection enjoyable in its own right, those efforts are in no way required for most people. So, I'd recommend ignoring test patches and calibration tools until you see a specific reason to use them in your own workflow. If the same problems that led you to use calibration for color work appear when working in grayscale, then the same solutions will likely suggest themselves. On the other hand, if technical accuracy is an enjoyable pursuit for you, it could be an artistic choice and creative constraint that works well for your personal style of photography. 

 

As far as shooting at different times of day, whether color or black and white, I call hogwash. Surely, if you're shooting a landscape and you want to emphasize the texture of the hills, then horizontal lighting will be better to increase the contrast along horizontal subjects. Or, if you want to create a flattering portrait, gentle light is often called for to minimize the appearance of skin "blemishes," and natural light is often soft in the early or late hours. Or, if you want an emotionally evocative landscape, the unusual but recognizable color hues of dawn and dusk will resonate with most viewers, and atmospheric conditions at those times might be most conducive to visually interesting things like mist. But it is far better to understand why those times tend to create favorable conditions than to slavishly follow a rule. (This is the same for any rule of composition, exposure, or processing.) Harsh midday light can be ideal for revealing interesting textures on vertical subjects, for drawing strong shadows that create leading lines and frames for the scene's subjects, and for creating reflections that can add an enormous amount of interest to a scene. Bright light makes people squint, which conveys a different emotion than the dilated pupils of darkness. In cities, people out and about are often hurried and harried at noontime, which creates a different typical scene for street shooting than on a weekend evening. These things are true whether working in color or black and white. I suspect that, traditionally, color films had less dynamic range to work with (particularly given color and saturation shifts at different levels of exposure), so black and white films were more forgiving when shooting high dynamic range scenes that are common in the bright light of noontime. But I do not believe this applies to digital sensors; if anything, monochrome sensors have lower effective dynamic ranges because highlights cannot be reconstructed in post. So, regardless of whether working in color or B&W, one can make great images at any time of day if one either anticipates the image they want to create and seeks out light that enhances that vision, or if they understand how the current light is behaving and seeks images that are strengthened by that character.

 

A possible advantage to B&W in urban scenes is that much advertising uses bright, eye-attracting colors, which distracts from the subject in a color photo; but the same advertising is typically simple in contrast, allowing it to disappear into the background in a B&W photo.

 

Technically, black and white sensors seem to be superior when working under wavelength-limited light. Consider an outdoor urban night scene. It will usually be lit by highly efficient devices that work by emitting rather narrow bands of light at high intensity, such as with sodium lamps or LEDs. Let's say the available light is primarily reddish, such as from an expiring sodium vapor bulb. With a color sensor that maximizes exposure among red sensels, green sensels are likely to be several stops underexposed and the blue sensels are likely to be nearly completely unexposed; effectively, the image is created from a quarter of the available pixels, which have to overcome the noise of the rest of the sensor. In comparison, a black and white sensor will have all of its sensels exposed evenly. An 18 megapixel Monochrom can readily out-resolve a ~50 megapixel Bayer-filter camera when the light is purely red or blue, although the difference may not be meaningful to most photographers.

 

Extreme color limitations do make a difference with various subjects, as you suggest. Light a solid red tomato using only blue light (whether with a blue LED, a blue gel over the light source, a blue filter over the lens, or otherwise), and the tomato will appear very dark, regardless of whether you're shooting in color or B&W; this is because the tomato is absorbing blue, which makes it appear red, and while it would reflect red light there is none to reflect so it might as well be unlit. Any blueberries sitting next to the tomato will appear lighter than usual for the same reason: the dominant light is the kind it reflects best, so it appears lighter. In practice, color photography doesn't utilize this phenomena because a strong color cast looks weird, but the exact same principles work well in grayscale due to how our eyes and minds allow far more latitude in interpreting the image. If you enjoy tabletop photography, it might be fun to shoot a fruit basket using different color gels on flashes at different angles to the subjects, which I'd expect to create far more local contrast and bite on the skin of the fruit -- although the stronger of an effect you achieve, the less realistic it will appear. The more common practice is to use a filter that reduces the blue spectrum in outdoors photography, which will darken a blue sky; light yellow will have a mild effect and dark red will have a strong effect because a light yellow filter allows more blue through than a dark red filter. Similarly, using a filter that favors light the color of a person's skin will make their skin appear lighter, and this "glow" can be quite pleasant.

 

That said, after experimenting with filters, I find that I generally prefer neutral captures and so I never actually use them. If the sky isn't interesting as a blue field, it is unlikely to be interesting to me as a light gray field or a dark gray field. But individual tastes vary widely, and your own style may go one way or the other -- and will likely change over time.

 

As for online resources, I think they are the same for black and white photography as for color photography. The most useful kind of resource I've found are the curated galleries from individual photographers. Curated galleries are good because, presumably, both the photographer and another expert have already looked through lots and lots of images and have chosen to present a selection of what they consider to be the best, at least for their then-present purposes. I prefer selections from a single photographer, rather than a mix of sources, so that I can better understand the common stylistic choices that the photographer made. Whether or not the subject matter or the style aligns with my own photography, I learn the most from looking at such collections, critically evaluating what I find to be the strengths and weaknesses seen, and playing the "how would I recreate that photo" game to exercise my own technical skills. In the end, use the same resources, just pay more attention to other work done in black and white...but inspecting color photographs is still useful, just as evaluating paintings and drawings is informative for anyone who practices a framed, two dimensional visual craft. The point is that there is no amount of discussion of style or technique that can replace simply looking at images and using them to inform both your conscious and your intuitive sense of creativity.

 

An easy trick, though: I sometimes set my computer to display everything in grayscale when viewing color images, just to quickly see what it'd look like in black and white. I often prefer the B&W version, even though it might want some contrast tweaks to become an even stronger image (to my personal tastes).

 

Ultimately, photography is photography, and using a B&W medium is just a choice of tools. I find working in grayscale to be enjoyable for its creative flexibility, challenging in the necessity to overcome the loss of color elements with strong composition, and rewarding in that the results are just as pleasing to me when everything comes together but the process of creating images entails less time spent fiddling with software.

 

Anyhow. I hope my ramblings have been somehow useful. At the very least, I've enjoyed writing them.

 

Cheers,

Jon

[Docderm]

Wow, Jon, thanks for all the thoughts. Well done. 

 

Some questions arise: 

1) What camera do you use? 

2) Would appreciate some good online/book references so....keep them coming!

 

DocDerm

[Jager]

As Steve and others have mentioned, forget trying to follow a bunch of rules (only shoot color at dawn and dusk?  Really?!).  Your object is to create images that please you, not come back with banal images that are technically perfect but which have zero emotional punch. 

 

And with that in mind, I'm going to gently disagree with my friend Carlos and suggest that the most interesting light is not uniform.  Give me pitch-black shadows and white-hot highlights, coming from unexpected directions and mixed together in interesting juxtapositions, any day of the week.  If there's one "rule" I like, it's... the more nightmarish the metering challenge for the photographer, the more fascinating the light and the more likely you are to capture something truly special.

 

Even that's not always right.  Shoot an engagement portrait session and the bride-to-be isn't likely to be happy with those interesting, high-contrast shots made in light which fascinates you.  That's when you want a nice, overcast day... God's lightbox-in-the-sky.  Just like Carlos says.

 

All of which is to say, shoot what is there... in whatever light you can muster.  There are no times not to photograph.

 

The most powerful thing I can offer is that you learn to imagine.  Learn to pre-visualize how that sensor on your new Monochrom is going to render the scene in front of you.  It's digital and so it's quick and, if you pay attention, it won't take long.

 

Congrats on the Monochrom!  You have a remarkably capable new partner.