Not too long ago, black and white photography was the default
everything was in black and white
from newspapers and books, to tv
all of this was due to the limitations of color
today, with digital photography, color has become the default
and black and white is more a choice
a creative choice
it is my choice for my photography work
and in this video, I'm going to talk about the
why, when and how to do black and white with digital photography
why
why black and white?
I get asked this question quite a lot
and my answer is always the same
black and white allows me to be more creative
it allows me to create images that I wouldn't be able to create with color
you see, color photography is more about being faithful to the original scene
while black and white makes us free to interpret that scene the way we want
and in my humble opinion, that makes black and white photography
a little bit more artistic than color photography
because art is a lot of things, but it's never about reproducing reality as perfectly as possible
it's more about the interpretation of the artist
the photographer in this case
there is always some kind of interpretation and some kind of translation
when we take a scene and we try to make a photograph
when we try to make an image of that scene
even when we shoot color
but black and white gives you more flexibility when it comes to make it your own
and that's because we can manipulate those black and white images
in post much further than we can do with a color image
with color, we can only go so far before the image starts to look fake
black and white is much more flexible in this sense
when
well, I do it all the time, I only shoot in black and white
I know that many photographers shoot only in color
when they run into an image that doesn't really work in color
they try the black and white version, just in case it works
and that's totally fine but in my opinion, that is not the best
way to create good black and white images
black and white photography requires a lot of commitment
it requires the photographer to take it seriously
it takes years to train your eye to see in black and white
good thing we have all the technology that can help us today
with these mirrorless cameras, so we can preview
our image in black and white directly in the viewfinder
film photographers had to use viewing filters to
preview what a scene would look like in black and white
and it is really important to have an idea of what the image is going to look like
because without the color, we might be making the wrong assumptions
the good thing is that the more we do it, the better we get
how
this might sound obvious to some people
but many photographers don't even consider that shooting black and
white with their digital cameras is an option
the truth is that digital sensors are all monochrome
they can only record the intensity of light: a lot of light, very little light
in order to get the color information from the scene
we need to install a filter in front of the sensor
I think it's called a Bayer array
that filters red, green and blue light, so the sensor can record
the intensity of each color independently
but if you don't install that filter, you get a monochrome camera
like the Leica Q M, I believe that's the name of the model
in theory, not having that filter there will give you more resolution and more contrast
but there are two reasons why I would never consider that camera
even though I'm a black and white photographer
the first one is the price
I could never afford a Leica
and the second one is because I want that color information in my raw files
we can play with each color independently
and that gives us a lot of power
the possibilities are almost endless
I'm going to show you the settings that I use in my Sony cameras to shoot black and white
to see the preview in the viewfinder and still get that raw file with all the information
I'm not really sure how other cameras work
but I'm pretty sure nowadays every camera will let you do what I do
well, as I said, I shoot raw
because that gives me as much control as possible
when it comes to editing, to manipulating the image in post
then, as I said, in my Sony camera there is an option called "creative style"
I have it set to black and white
that creative style only affects jpegs
but since we are shooting raw, the raw file is intact
the advantage is that we can see the preview
both on the screen and in the viewfinder
in real time, in black and white
and this is amazing, it makes black and white photography so much easier
and you learn much more, you learn faster
because you have instant feedback
you are looking at the scene with all the greens, the reds, the blues
and then you look through the viewfinder and you see how that gets converted to black and white
I customize this creative style a little bit
I increase the contrast to +3 so it's as close as possible to the final image that I'm going to be
creating afterwards
I just wish this was a little bit more customizable
I'd love to load my lightroom presets in my camera
I usually shoot underexposed, just by a little bit
a third of a stop, or half a stop
with digital cameras you have to be really careful with the highlights
this is the opposite of film
it's very hard to retrieve details from the shadows when you shoot film
the opposite is true with digital,
it's very hard to retrieve details from the highlights if you clip them
even though, I have to say that I'm not
really afraid of clipping neither the shadows nor the highlights
because that's something I'm going to do myself in post
you see, I like to compress the tonal range of the image
there is no pure blacks on my images
there is no pure whites on my images
and this is what I was talking about earlier
this is something that would never work in color
because the images would look pretty bad and pretty fake
but in my opinion, it works beautifully in black and white
I can't believe I forgot about this
but when I compress that tonal range
that might create blobs of very dark areas, or very bright areas
without much texture or detail to them
I use grain to add texture to those areas
and I think that the result works pretty well
another things I usually adjust in post is the brightness or the exposure
I have to increase it a little bit
because I was shooting underexposed
depending on the scene, I increase the contrast, I increase the clarity
if I'm going with a low key image, I take that black slider all the way down
if I'm going with a high key image, I turn those whites all the way up
and then again, depending on the image, I might play with the colors independently
usually with the blues
I might darken the sky just taking the blue slider down
or I might want to create some haze by taking those blues all the way up
so I create a high key image that way too
the last thing I wanted to talk about black and white photography with digital cameras is infrared
I just say got my RX100V back
I converted this camera to be an infrared only camera
I'm having a lot of fun
I'm going to be making a video just about this in the future
but I'm still learning, so it might take a little bit
I had shot infrared film before, but the experience was a little bit disappointing
because if just regular black and white is already hard to visualize
infrared is even harder
so I was kind of blindly shooting scenes that I didn't know what they would look like afterwards
but now, with this camera, I can see the preview in real time
so I can be more intentional about what I'm doing
I can also shoot handheld which is great
in any case, as I said, something to talk about in the future
and that's all for this video
I hope it was useful and I hope that
it encourages you to try some black and white with your digital camera
because it's a ton of fun
you can see the world through different glasses
it's a different way to see the things that we are used to see every day
thank you so much for watching
and see you in the next one