The psychology of "quitting" colour

[Jeff S]

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4 minutes ago, pippy said:

Funnily enough I've never once gone out with the intention "to shoot only colour".

Only time I did it before now was on the infrequent occasion I loaded my film camera with color film, typically for a family event or other specific project. This recent digital attempt was an experiment; not a terribly successful one.

Jeff

[pippy]

5 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Only time I did it before now was on the infrequent occasion I loaded my film camera with color film, typically for a family event or other specific project...

Starting from back around 1980 when I had a pair of Nikon F cameras I would always have b'n'w in one body and E6 in the other. In those pre-digital days I could cope quite happily with only my 'mono' camera but couldn't be at all comfortable if E6 was my only option. This was a practice which I maintained throughout my film-only years; i.e. up to 2008.

Perhaps one aspect which helps me maintain a fascination for my own personal photography is that there is absolutely no cross-over whatsoever between my pro work and my personal stuff. As a very rough approximation 80% of my day-job will concern smallish-scale studio still-life with the other 20% being location portraiture using 'studio' lighting. ALL of that is shot in colour. By contrast NONE of my personal work is still-life nor portraiture and, as mentioned previously, almost everything will be rendered in monochrome.

Additionally nowadays all my paid snapping is executed with DSLR gear which equipment, although ideally suited for the task at hand, is kit which in all honesty I don't even like whereas 99%(*) of all my own stuff is captured using Leica M cameras which I absolutely love.

As such it is very easy for me, mentally and physically, to disassociate what constitutes Work from that which gives me Pleasure.

Philip.

* I do also use various other film cameras but that's another story...

Edited November 8, 2022 by pippy

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[Besprosvet]

On 11/7/2022 at 1:23 AM, Photojournoguy said:

Interesting psychological topic!

I shoot exclusively M10M and nothing else since end of 2021. Picking up the camera was both my first experience with a monochrome camera and first time I ever held a Leica - so first-timer combo of rangefinder experience in addition to color-less photography.

My reasoning was:

1. I am a hobbyist and have zero commercial or financial pressure to cater to anyone whims but my own (family documentary work)

2. I reviewed my all-time favorite images in the four years prior, which was easy to do as I made annual books of my work and was easy to filter and sift through in Lightroom. Through this, I discovered that 85% of my favorite shots were B&W. If it were 50% or less, I would've waffled and figured my entry point into Leica would be a color model but what I connected to emotionally the most was B&W captures, and it was easily discernible through the exploration of my artistic voice (again, not having any financial pressure to perform for others, I just naturally gravitated towards B&W).

3. In the weeks deciding if I was going to take a Monochrom plunge or stick with color, I realized that my heart said Monochrom and my head said color (for that flexibility and 'just in case' moments). I also realized that as this is my hobby, my heart wins the day as I'm only fulfilling my own desires at the end of the day and the only person I have to 'report to' is myself.

4. I kept my Sony kit (A7III and lenses) on standby in case I either didn't want to be 100% committed to Monochrom or the rangefinder experience. I was smitten by the rangefinder and the tonal depth of my Day 1 downloads that I never again picked up by Sony kit, which was then relegated to webcam status for work calls. I held onto the kit for six months to see if the honeymoon period would come to an end and my mind would come to its senses, but never did and, at that point, sold all my Sony kit.

Worst case, I get tired of Monochrom at a small loss and pick up a color M. My original plan was years from now to pick up a color M anyways as a complement and, ignoring the financial aspect of that, at the moment I cannot imagine doing that, as I simply love the Mono experience too much. And as it helps my artistic vision come to life, it feels a part of me rather than forcing a restraint on me - I recognize it's simply part of what makes my imagery part of my identity.

I've begun to offer family documentary work to others and my first response always includes my dedicated B&W output so no one is caught off guard (also my site is all B&W to further avoid any confusion with what to expect after seeing my portfolio). Since it's a passion rather than money maker, I don't care who books and who doesn't (one specifically didn't want 'just' B&W and that is totally fine - I'll just keep enjoying my niche and whoever wants me to capture in my own voice will accept me as I am. Very easy to say when I don't need to put food on the table with imagery...

Also for me a Monochrom was the first ever experience with Leica (M 246). The rangefinder attitude in framing and the Monochrom "lifestyle" are a mind blowing experience. Since I also work as a photographer I have plenty of Canon stuff, but for daily snaps I mostly used an X100V (and my beloved Pana GX1 + Panny 20mm as a backup).

Sometimes I miss colors when I see some "meaningful matches", but no big deal.

I barely pick up color cameras since I got the Monochrom: only exception "wow this new colorful sweater/coat is so cute on my little daughter" situations, purely for memories that are going to need colors in the span of 5 or 10 years.
I bought a Monochrom because the heart of my photo identity is black and white, and shooting with a color camera ended me never doing black and white since I see.... colors! Switching the screen in bw thru jpg was just a temporary solution and often unsuccessful. With the M 246 I'm seeing again in black and white and it's so beautiful.

On 11/6/2022 at 12:25 AM, Me Leica! said:

A few months ago I decided to experiment with shooting black and white only for a period. While I could of course have just used any camera and converted the pictures, I wanted to give myself zero room for backing out (and I don't shoot film and the Phase One monochrome-only body probably costs more than the total of every camera I've ever used), so I picked up a second hand Monochrom 246, used it for a while, then sold it. (And it properly blew my mind; I remember reading the venerable Ming Thein when he described the Monochrom as having "acuity that goes beyond that of a Foveon sensor" and thinking "no way", but I'd say that at the very least it matched the Foveon, and I speak as someone who has used the Sigma Merrills a lot).

I went back to shooting a mix of colour and (converted ) BW, but the time I spent with the Monochrom left a lasting impression and I've started considering doing it again, on a far longer term basis. I don't like having multiple cameras, so this would be a pretty significant step. I would never say that I've got "bored" of photography, as I enjoy it too much, but I think a major step like working in BW only could send me off in new directions.

The main question / point I wanted to put to the good people here is: for those who shoot the Monochom (or the Q monochrom) only (i.e. who don't shoot colour at all), did you find there was some kind of "process" by which you eventually gave up colour photography? Was it an instant decision? Did you (or do you) still sometimes see a scene and think "that just begs for colour"? Or have you been able to make a clean break with colour photography? I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.

This is more of an abstract discussion than a technical one, but I hope it will get some responses going.

The idea of having just a b/w camera was in me since the first Monochrom came out, but you know: money. That said I think I will still have a color camera at home, regardless of profession. I cannot entirely renounce to color photography, but limiting my choices carrying with me just one tool is exciting and keeps things simple, but deep.

That said, my next camera is going to be a color capable M, and, maybe, a FF Foveon, if they're ever going to make it! I also have a DP2 Merrill that I kinda love/hate for the obvious reasons that everybody knows, and because I loathe Sigma lenses, sharp sharp sharp, but no tonal variation and harsh. Also, Foveon is a true disgrace for portraits, my wife hated being portraited by the Merrill. Softening the "hardness" of the raw also made the Foveon look like a common camera, making it pretty pointless, so... Idk, let's see if they make some kind of miracle with an L mount FF Foveon

[sometimesmaybe]

12 hours ago, Besprosvet said:

I barely pick up color cameras since I got the Monochrom

similar experience here. i got the m246 as a 'B' camera to my GFX, but after using it for a few months it's now my preferred camera. the only time i prefer the GFX when i NEED autofocus or it's golden hour

[ramarren]

Quitting color? Hmm. You have to understand color, and how your B&W recording mechanism records colors, to make good B&W photographs. As a result, really getting involved with B&W photography means a deep commitment to understanding color spectral responses and how to make them work in monochrome shades of gray. 

I shot B&W exclusively for years when I was starting photography because I simply couldn't afford color film and processing, and processing color film at home was no savings over going to a photofinisher. Beyond that, it always seemed to me that there was a certain limitation to a photographer's control in doing color work ... I mean, after all, if you make a photograph of a person, either the skin tone is right or it looks bad, either a plant's colors were accurate to the original or the photo looked bad again. And color always seemed to be somewhat literal in its representation of real things. I loved the fact that monochrome capture threw away a lot of that kind of limitation and let me choose more freely how I wanted the colors to go into tones, how I wanted those tones to interact in the whole photo, and how those decisions let me leave the literal behind and escape into the paradigm or abstraction that my mind's eye was seeing when I pressed the shutter release. 

But far from quitting color, I had to become an expert on color in order to make the B&W sing for me, in order to have the tools and techniques that would give me the freedom to make B&W the way I wanted, not simply the way a film (or a b&w digital sensor) would see it. So I ended up shooting a lot of color work, slides mostly, in order to truly understand color and correct exposure, and slides because that was the most unforgiving color recording medium. 

This is the reason why, when I finally bought the M10-M, the very first thing I did was to do test exposures of an Xrite color checker with a range of filtration and compare it to exposures with no filtration, and my rendered B&W from color raw images. That set up the baseline of my color understanding in the context of the M10-M sensor, so now I can choose properly what filter I want when I go out to shoot a particular idea. Most of what I shoot with the M10-M, as a consequence, requires very, very little rendering work to come out right on target. 

So ... go shoot B&W if that's what you're interested in doing. But don't quit color, LEARN color and how your B&W image capture ... whether film or digital ... renders it. That's how you'll get the best B&W.  

G

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[Jeff S]

27 minutes ago, ramarren said:

Quitting color? Hmm. You have to understand color, and how your B&W recording mechanism records colors, to make good B&W photographs. As a result, really getting involved with B&W photography means a deep commitment to understanding color spectral responses and how to make them work in monochrome shades of gray. 

I shot B&W exclusively for years when I was starting photography because I simply couldn't afford color film and processing, and processing color film at home was no savings over going to a photofinisher. Beyond that, it always seemed to me that there was a certain limitation to a photographer's control in doing color work ... I mean, after all, if you make a photograph of a person, either the skin tone is right or it looks bad, either a plant's colors were accurate to the original or the photo looked bad again. And color always seemed to be somewhat literal in its representation of real things. I loved the fact that monochrome capture threw away a lot of that kind of limitation and let me choose more freely how I wanted the colors to go into tones, how I wanted those tones to interact in the whole photo, and how those decisions let me leave the literal behind and escape into the paradigm or abstraction that my mind's eye was seeing when I pressed the shutter release. 

But far from quitting color, I had to become an expert on color in order to make the B&W sing for me, in order to have the tools and techniques that would give me the freedom to make B&W the way I wanted, not simply the way a film (or a b&w digital sensor) would see it. So I ended up shooting a lot of color work, slides mostly, in order to truly understand color and correct exposure, and slides because that was the most unforgiving color recording medium. 

This is the reason why, when I finally bought the M10-M, the very first thing I did was to do test exposures of an Xrite color checker with a range of filtration and compare it to exposures with no filtration, and my rendered B&W from color raw images. That set up the baseline of my color understanding in the context of the M10-M sensor, so now I can choose properly what filter I want when I go out to shoot a particular idea. Most of what I shoot with the M10-M, as a consequence, requires very, very little rendering work to come out right on target. 

So ... go shoot B&W if that's what you're interested in doing. But don't quit color, LEARN color and how your B&W image capture ... whether film or digital ... renders it. That's how you'll get the best B&W.  

G

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Surely helps when it comes to use of color filters, for instance, and always important  to learn how one’s gear responds. One must still understand, however, that color hue and color saturation have no effect on black and white tonality; only luminance/brightness matters.  This has significant implications not just for shooting, but also for digital post-processing.  
 

Eileen Rafferty’s presentation offers some practical examples..

Jeff

[Likaleica]

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On 11/5/2022 at 5:25 PM, Me Leica! said:

A few months ago I decided to experiment with shooting black and white only for a period. While I could of course have just used any camera and converted the pictures, I wanted to give myself zero room for backing out (and I don't shoot film and the Phase One monochrome-only body probably costs more than the total of every camera I've ever used), so I picked up a second hand Monochrom 246, used it for a while, then sold it. (And it properly blew my mind; I remember reading the venerable Ming Thein when he described the Monochrom as having "acuity that goes beyond that of a Foveon sensor" and thinking "no way", but I'd say that at the very least it matched the Foveon, and I speak as someone who has used the Sigma Merrills a lot).

I went back to shooting a mix of colour and (converted ) BW, but the time I spent with the Monochrom left a lasting impression and I've started considering doing it again, on a far longer term basis. I don't like having multiple cameras, so this would be a pretty significant step. I would never say that I've got "bored" of photography, as I enjoy it too much, but I think a major step like working in BW only could send me off in new directions.

The main question / point I wanted to put to the good people here is: for those who shoot the Monochom (or the Q monochrom) only (i.e. who don't shoot colour at all), did you find there was some kind of "process" by which you eventually gave up colour photography? Was it an instant decision? Did you (or do you) still sometimes see a scene and think "that just begs for colour"? Or have you been able to make a clean break with colour photography? I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.

This is more of an abstract discussion than a technical one, but I hope it will get some responses going.

Like many people on this forum, and in this topic particularly, I began with BW years ago (1968) when BW was the only real practical option, in terms of affordability, simplicity and quality.  It just wasn't possible back then to practically make a good color print (short of dye transfer), so most of the best photographs were in BW.  (But I do remember wishing Kodak would make a film that was great for color and BW.  Now we have that in the form of a sensor.)

I have severe panprotanopia, which is red/green color blindness, so most of my work ends up as black and white prints because I just don't trust my perception or interpretation of color.  My retina is like a sensor with a partial Bayer filter.  It's why I relate to the monochrom camera more than the others - we see eye to eye.  

To answer the OP's original question, one way to wean off of color photography is to set the LV and playback to monochrome and set the camera to make a BW JPG at the same time, then when you review the images later in your chosen software, you can select from the BW images and use the color RAW as a basis for post processing.  This way, you keep the BW mindset when photographing, but have all the RAW data and tools with which to express your vision.

[Camaro5]

I'm considering a Monochrom, but haven't decided on the model yet.  Two of my favorite photographers, Ansel Adams and Sebastian Salgado shot on film on older gear and none of their images are what I would consider to be tack-sharp, but are stunning, nonetheless.  That said, I am not Adams or Salgado and I know what qualities I would want out of a Monochrom.   

I'm leaning towards an M246 with either a 35 or 28 Summicron.  I know how these lenses render in color but I'm not sure how they would do in B&W.   I can't give up color completely but have a personal need to do some B&W for my own pursuits.  

I've tried shooting jpegs with my Q2 and also with a 35 APO on an SL2-S.  I've also tried conversions, but neither of these, as good as they might be, approach the kind of renderings I see with actual Monochrom cameras.  

[sometimesmaybe]

4 hours ago, Camaro5 said:

I'm leaning towards an M246 with either a 35 or 28 Summicron.

i reckon that's a safe choice. the m246 will give you a good cost to features ratio. Liveview will help with BNW visualisation too  

[MJB]

On 11/6/2022 at 7:23 PM, williamj said:

The way I look at it now is if I want to answer the question what does it look like I will shoot colour but if I want to answer the question what does it feel like I will shoot black and white.

This seems like such an arbitrary and unnecessarily limited view. There’s this sort of mentality sometimes that B&W is “real art” while color is too consumer-oriented, or it’s cheating or lazy somehow. I don’t get it - it’s just a different format. It doesn’t have to be all sunsets and rainbows. You can have gritty documentary work that makes good use of color, and even expresses feeling. 
 

That said, if you prefer the B&W aesthetic and prefer to work in that medium, more power to you. I just do t think it’s objectively more pure or artistically superior to color. 
 

And I’m definitely not knocking it. I learned on B&W film and now shoot both formats. Although I admit with digital I do prefer being able to make the choice in post. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by MJB

[Besprosvet]

On 1/11/2023 at 6:46 PM, Camaro5 said:

I'm considering a Monochrom, but haven't decided on the model yet.  Two of my favorite photographers, Ansel Adams and Sebastian Salgado shot on film on older gear and none of their images are what I would consider to be tack-sharp, but are stunning, nonetheless.  That said, I am not Adams or Salgado and I know what qualities I would want out of a Monochrom.   

I'm leaning towards an M246 with either a 35 or 28 Summicron.  I know how these lenses render in color but I'm not sure how they would do in B&W.   I can't give up color completely but have a personal need to do some B&W for my own pursuits.  

I've tried shooting jpegs with my Q2 and also with a 35 APO on an SL2-S.  I've also tried conversions, but neither of these, as good as they might be, approach the kind of renderings I see with actual Monochrom cameras.  

The M246 has everything anybody would want in a "$$$convenient$$$" package.

The kind of lenses I prefer on it are gritty low contrast vintage ones, classic look. Modern lenses render very nice, super detailed with very dark and dense shadows. It's just a matter of personal taste

Here and here I posted some photos I took yesterday with the Orion-15 on the M246, hope it helps.

[Camaro5]

7 hours ago, Besprosvet said:

The M246 has everything anybody would want in a "$$$convenient$$$" package.

The kind of lenses I prefer on it are gritty low contrast vintage ones, classic look. Modern lenses render very nice, super detailed with very dark and dense shadows. It's just a matter of personal taste

Here and here I posted some photos I took yesterday with the Orion-15 on the M246, hope it helps.

I did end up getting an M246 about a month ago.  I have a 28/2 Elmarit, a CV 50 APO, and a 75/2.5 Summarit.  They all produce nice images.  

I like the camera.  What took me a little while to adjust to is the post processing and how different it is from doing color images.  It's not difficult, it's just a different approach.  

[Besprosvet]

59 minutes ago, Camaro5 said:

I did end up getting an M246 about a month ago.  I have a 28/2 Elmarit, a CV 50 APO, and a 75/2.5 Summarit.  They all produce nice images.  

I like the camera.  What took me a little while to adjust to is the post processing and how different it is from doing color images.  It's not difficult, it's just a different approach.  

To me, even ooc jpg (with high contrast) looks already 95% of what I do from raw on Capture One

[pgh]

I recently picked up an m10m after having my m10 set to black and white jpg (with bw dng imports) for some time longer than a year - as an exercise of sorts. I would have happily stayed there but the image quality shortcomings were enough for me to want more. (I still pine for an m10-r … but seeing as color isn’t a priority now, and the m10m beats it handily for bw, well, easy choice).
 

I’ve never before this had more than a passing interest in bw work and never really connected with the darkroom process either, though I learned it first. 
 

What has changed my mind surprisingly has been the advance in image technology and the idea of what a photograph is. I’ve come to the idea that a black and white picture is more honest in a weird way. No one’s idealized world, or art depicting such a world is in mono. Mono announces immediately it is not an accurate representation of reality, but it does not claim to be. Color isn’t but often tries to be, and in doing so distorts it while also misleading many viewers. Mono can’t hide its flaw and while color has the same flaw (there isn’t an accurate depiction of reality, really) it hides it too well and let’s people think that the picture is indeed how life looks. It never is. This coupled with AI that can make a colorful bunch of pixels of whatever anyone can think of further emphasizes the value of working in a more traditional visual language. I’m not uninterested in color, but somehow I feel that color photography has reached some terminal limit of a sort. At any rate, 20 years into this it’s a new challenge to limit myself in this way, especially as color was my primary subject and passion for so long. I still love to look at color paintings but I haven’t seen color photography that has done much new lately, as if the formal possibilities are closer to exhausted.
 

With mono, the world is more mysterious, but also more legible in the tradition of the medium - and that is the only place left to explore for me right now. In compelling documentary work, color tends to be distracting - seductive even, but it can also ruin an otherwise fantastic image. As subject matter, it’s never as compelling as the real thing. Take the fall foliage cliche - no picture ever beats seeing it in nature, and the color is the only interesting thing about the picture to begin with. It’s a poor substitute for being outdoors. But a mono image won’t even try something like that - and the image itself when well done can more effectively transcend the subject matter it captures. 

[rtai]

Black and White photography isn’t desaturated color photography. The psychology is not to shoot for color and then see how it looks in b/w. I suppose there’s some merit in the statement a monochrom camera aside from obvious technical differences puts the user in a state of mind. The best advice I got from my instructor 30 years ago was to learn about black and white photography first making darkroom prints. Once you know what a negative should look like you will figure out how to make one. 

[ramarren]

Well, 30 years ago was before a lot of the young photographers I talk to and work with were born. To many in this current generation, there's no such thing as a "wet lab" or darkroom ... All they've known since they were 12 years old has been digital cameras. So the advice to make prints in a darkroom isn't really useful to them. 

I try to teach them how a b&w capture device sees the world, and how to modify it to see the world as your mind's eye imagines it in monochrome. It's best to do this with examples and color reference charts, to study what happens to colors translated through a b&w capture device, and how filters change the native capture characteristics. I find it fun to expand the consciousness of the young folks who often learned photography with totally automated, "do everything for you" digital cameras, and most of them seem to enjoy it too. I think it gives them a satisfying sense of accomplishment to discover that they can change the reality of their photographic vision by just understanding and manipulating a couple of simple, basic things...

G

[pgh]

2 hours ago, rtai said:

Black and White photography isn’t desaturated color photography. 

Sure it is. It's not only that, but in 2023 it is actually a vast majority that. Maybe not for you, and that's fine. 

[Jeff S]

4 hours ago, ramarren said:

Well, 30 years ago was before a lot of the young photographers I talk to and work with were born. To many in this current generation, there's no such thing as a "wet lab" or darkroom ... All they've known since they were 12 years old has been digital cameras. So the advice to make prints in a darkroom isn't really useful to them. 

I try to teach them how a b&w capture device sees the world, and how to modify it to see the world as your mind's eye imagines it in monochrome. It's best to do this with examples and color reference charts, to study what happens to colors translated through a b&w capture device, and how filters change the native capture characteristics. I find it fun to expand the consciousness of the young folks who often learned photography with totally automated, "do everything for you" digital cameras, and most of them seem to enjoy it too. I think it gives them a satisfying sense of accomplishment to discover that they can change the reality of their photographic vision by just understanding and manipulating a couple of simple, basic things...

G

Apart from secondary effects using colored lens filters, I prefer to teach others about luminance/brightness characteristics of the subject, using color-based digital cameras for b&w, as color hue and saturation of the subject have no effect on black and white tonalities.

Jeff

Edited April 18, 2023 by Jeff S

[ramarren]

4 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Apart from secondary effects using colored lens filters, I prefer to teach others about luminance/brightness characteristics of the subject, using color-based digital cameras for b&w, as color hue and saturation of the subject have no effect on black and white tonalities.

Jeff

No effect? Of course color has an effect on B&W tonalities. Otherwise, why were B&W color filters invented, way back in the film capture era?

The spectral sensitivity of the recording medium defines how shades of grays are presented in the captured image. With a monochromatic sensor, you need to use filters to differentiate between things that, in luminance alone, look well separated in tone due to color but in B&W all have like tones. You *must* use filters to separate reds from greens, etc, because if you don't they'll often have exactly the same tonality in B&W. 

See my post here to see what different filters do to change the relationships between color to grayscale tonalities with an M10-M. Using color filters is an essential part of doing high quality B&W photography. 

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by ramarren

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[Jeff S]

1 hour ago, ramarren said:

No effect? Of course color has an effect on B&W tonalities. Otherwise, why were B&W color filters invented, way back in the film capture era?

The spectral sensitivity of the recording medium defines how shades of grays are presented in the captured image. With a monochromatic sensor, you need to use filters to differentiate between things that, in luminance alone, look well separated in tone due to color but in B&W all have like tones. You *must* use filters to separate reds from greens, etc, because if you don't they'll often have exactly the same tonality in B&W. 

See my post here to see what different filters do to change the relationships between color to grayscale tonalities with an M10-M. Using color filters is an essential part of doing high quality B&W photography. 

 

Yes, color hue and saturation have no effect; only brightness matters, as taught and demonstrated here (starting near 18-19 min). With HSL sliders, one can ignore the first two. 
 

 

I’ve seen your posts. The concepts discussed in the video still apply.
 

Jeff

Edited April 19, 2023 by Jeff S