B&W Photography

[masterbert]

hi,

i'm a newbie to digital photography and to my Nikon D3000. please help me on what settings should i use for b&w? or how can i shoot b&w?

thank you so much!!!

[TheDarkReaver]

Shoot normally, convert in post processing.

[BigFuzzy]

This sort of question is bound to get you a lot of acidic responses because it's a wiiiide general question you're asking... so beware.

I would never ever shoot in b&w with the camera. I would always shoot in color and then convert to b&w later. Because when you shoot in b&w in-camera, you leave it up to the camera to decide what a good b&w conversion is... and it's normally bad. Plus, shooting in color gives you the option of having both a color and b&w version in case you want/need it.

In the end.. the best advice I can give you is read the manual that came with your camera. Read the instructions on how to use whatever software editing tool you have (whether it be something like Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever came with your camera) and learn how to convert to b&w. THEN, I would do searches online because there are probably literally millions of tutorials on how to convert to b&w.. heck, I imagine there's even one on DPS if you just look around a bit.

[nickbedford]

Shoot RAW and you get the best of both worlds. Sometimes I'll flick my camera to high contrast black and white profile to get an idea of just how a shot might come out, but then when I get the RAW photos into Lightroom I can whatever I want.

[masterbert]

thanks everyone!

[deck]

I am a B&W addict lately, street shooting is a lot more fun shooting in B&W,
but that is just a preference, what I would still suggest is to shoot in color then post process it later, that way you have the color and monochromatic versions of it

but Juuuuust in case you really wanna shoot B&W in cam, set it to monochromatic, and up the contrast a little bit. that should give a good punch to black and white photos

[inkista]

Originally Posted by nickbedford

Shoot RAW and you get the best of both worlds. Sometimes I'll flick my camera to high contrast black and white profile to get an idea of just how a shot might come out, but then when I get the RAW photos into Lightroom I can whatever I want.

+1

You get the B&W preview and you have all the color data you could possibly want for post processing manipulation. I particularly like that in-camera you can specify color filters for B&W processing, so not just straight desaturation, but also B&W with a red filter to darken skies, etc. is possible.

When it comes to converting a color image to black and white, there are several different methods. The best one to learn with first, imho, is using the Channel Mixer. Most of the basic methods are described here:

Converting a Digital Color Photo into Black and White