Shooting in B&W vs converting color to B&W?

[LyndsayWatson]

My camera has a B&W setting, but I'm wondering, do you think it's better to shoot in black in white? Or do you think it's better to shoot in color and convert to B&W later? Thanks everyone!

[OsmosisStudios]

Always shoot colour: You can take colour out, you cant add it back in.

[LyndsayWatson]

Good point. Thank you!

[ravncat]

Not only that (what osmosis says), but your camera doesn't shoot in black and white - it just does an on the fly conversion to black and white from the color shot. (There are very few "monochrome" digital cameras - like the kodak dcs 760m)

So, by shooting in black and white - you are stuck with editing the camera's conversion. Doing the conversion yourself, gives you alot more flexibility for the final BW image.

[digirebelva]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Always shoot colour: You can take colour out, you cant add it back in.

Actually you can if you are shooting in raw..& not jpeg, the color info is still there...I found it out by accident...left the b&w option on when I didnt want it. was able to go in the raw and pull back out the color...

[inkista]

For me RAW with B&W is the best of both worlds, so I semi-disagree with OS. Shoot RAW to retain the color information for B&W conversion in post processing, but use the B&W settings to get instant feedback on whether you visualized the scene in B&W properly, (including color filters if you use Canon's in-camera B&W settings).

You want all the color information for the B&W conversion. You'll have a lot more flexibility that way. You can do the equivalent of adding any color filter that you might have used with B&W film for specific effects. Like Ansel Adams using a red filter to darken skies for his famous "Monolith" Half Dome shot. You can get drastically different effects by manipulating color information for B&W conversion than you would with simple desaturation.

This Cambridge in Colour tutorial gives you a lot of the basics as to why you want to shoot in color for B&W conversion.

Also, this Julieanne Kost video tutorial for Lightroom will give you a few more tips if you're using LR. Around the 2:08 mark, you'll see how you can use targeted adjustments by colors.

[Doug Pardee]

About the only technical reason to shoot in-camera B&W JPEG would be if you need to deliver B&W JPEGs immediately. For example, the pro at the amusement park shooting old-timey pictures of the tourists, with the pictures going directly to the printer for immediate sale.

There are some preference reasons that some people might shoot in-camera B&W. For example, practicing B&W photography — some people tend to "see" a bit differently when they know they're committed to B&W. And, of course, there are many snapshooters who never post-process their photos and would select B&W if they wanted to get a B&W print.

Sidebar: personally, I believe that in most cases there are color images and there are B&W images. If you took a particular photo because the scene had shapes, textures, and tones suitable for a good B&W image, the notion of "going back" to color usually borders on absurd. Similarly, most colorful photos really suck when converted to B&W. In My Opinion, few images really work well both in color and B&W, and the "you can't go back if you shoot B&W" argument is weak.

That said:

I like B&W, and I take a fair number of photos intended for B&W presentation. Still, I usually shoot color (usually Raw) even when I have no intention of producing a color image. First, it gives me more latitude in the type of conversion to B&W — there are probably a dozen different ways to do it, each with advantages and disadvantages for various images. Second, it allows me to do color-selective editing prior to the conversion; the simplest example is the application of a color filter during post-processing. Finally, if I shoot Raw I get a better tonal range out of my camera (important for most B&W work), and I suspect the same is true of most digital camera models.

As Inkista said, shooting Raw with the camera set to B&W will, for many camera models, give you a B&W preview on the LCD while the Raw data is necessarily always color. If your camera does this, it's a pretty useful choice for the B&W photographer.