Shoot Black and White for a year straight?

[Izzy]

I am considering shooting black and white for a full year. Why does this feel like such a commitment? I figured that shooting in black and white alone will help me better look at things as textures and light and dark.

I think this could help my color photography later, but who knows my camera may stay in B&W mode unless that perfect sunset or sunrise presents itself.

[Photologyst]

With digital it is better to shoot in color and then convert to B & W in PS processing.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by Photologyst

With digital it is better to shoot in color and then convert to B & W in PS processing.

Shooting RAW and 2/3 dark seems to be getting me good results with highlights and rich shadows???

[Photologyst]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Shooting RAW and 2/3 dark seems to be getting me good results with highlights and rich shadows???

The thing is that every "expert" whom I have ever read or heard of states that in digital one should shoot everything in colour to get more info. RAW is best.

You can of course experiment and do both to see which looks better the one shot in B & W or the coloured one then PS converted.

Here's a tutorial: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/a...and-white.html

[IABoomer]

Is this inspired by these blog posts, or something you came to decide on your own?

The Online Photographer: The Leica as Teacher
The Online Photographer: Why It Has To Be a Leica
The Online Photographer: 'A Leica for a Year' a Year Later

In any event, good luck with it should you go through with it, and keep us posted. Maybe make it a 365 project and post in that forum.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by IABoomer

Is this inspired by these blog posts, or something you came to decide on your own?.

Actually I had not seen those posts. I did come up with it alone. I figured it was a case of getting back to the very basic.

[Photologyst]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Actually I had not seen those posts. I did come up with it alone. I figured it was a case of getting back to the very basic.

Except—we are no longer shooting film. Even then, the best used the chemical darkroom.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Shooting RAW and 2/3 dark seems to be getting me good results with highlights and rich shadows???

I would actually suggest shooting normally and use the RAW converter's HSL tab.

[ravncat]

Set your jpg settings to be then shoot in raw you'll get the best of both worlds

[sk66]

While I will agree you probably won't get as good a conversion shooting in B/W Jpeg, I wouldn't disregard the idea.
There is a lot to learn about "seeing", light, tonalities, what colors are "gray", etc...
If you use liveview the LCD will show how the image will look as B/W to give you an idea, or chimp afterwards to see if it meets your expectations.

I would suggest shooting in Raw+Jpeg as the Raw will be unaffected and will allow you to see if you can do a better conversion than the camera does. Attempting your own conversion will also develop the skills should you later want to convert images you capture in color without a B/W copy.

There's no way I would do it for a year...I like color.