Quote:
Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios
I've trained myself to "see" in black and white with my film body and even with colour in it now I cant see in anything but.
The first step is to figure out what kind of black and white you want to do, and do it in post. Never shoot in black and white: Always edit it that way.
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(boldface is mine)
I have to ask why? If you properly expose for a B&W final image in monotone, you will end up with as good or better final image.
Here's my advice...the first thing you need to do is forget everything you know or have heard about color. Color is nothing more than a distraction. You need to train your eyes to see in tones and shades of grey. You need to read the light and see it as a range of dynamics that interact to form the image. In order to achieve a quality B&W image, you need black, white, and as many possible shades of grey as you can mustre in between. And you need to forget about color.
The easiest way to learn how to properly expose for any given B&W shot, is to shoot in monotone, and check your dynamic range, tones, and contrast on the scene. You can't check your B&W dynamic range with a color shot. It just doesn't work that way. If you shoot in monotone, you don't need to hope you got the right exposure value...you know you do.
The problem is that color is permanent. Green is always green, blue is always blue, and red is always red. In a neutrally exposed monotone image, blue, red, and green are the same tone. To correct for this, and create contrast and dynamics between various shades and hues of those colors, we use glass and digital filters in red, yellow, orange, blue, and green. These filters brighten their like colors and darken their opposites. This creates drama and greatly increases the dynamic range within the scene.
Not only will shooting in monotone greatly reduce the amount of time you need to spend processing your photos, it will also greatly help you to learn how to "see in B&W", because you can compare, on scene, what the camera is picking up, and what you are looking at.
Take a look through my blog in my signature, and judge for yourself. 99% of my B&W images are shot in monotone. I know that I want to produce a B&W final image long before I ever press the shutter. Composition, angles, elements, lighting conditions...everything changes in B&W, and 9 out 10 times a good color exposure is different than a good B&W exposure, of the same exact scene, taken at the exact same time. This is because each image uses different cues to convey the message to the viewer.
If you really want to shoot high quality, striking B&W shots, your first priority is to learn how to "see" in B&W. The fastest and easiest way to do this in todays wonderful digital age, is to shoot in monotone, and check your exposures on scene. Gone are the days that you need to shoot through your brackets and hope that you got the right exposure when you get to processing your film. With the miracle of the digital camera, why would you want to go back to waiting until you can process to find out if you got the shot again? Why risk blowing it and hoping you can "recover" a bad exposure from a RAW file? Isn't it easier to have a look right there, and walk away fairly certain you got the dynamic and contrast range you want?
Oh, by the way...Leanr about the Zone System, how it applies in the digital age, and how to actually use iot with your camera to get the best exposure you can from a scene. If you want more in depth help with any of that, feel free to shoot me a private message!