BW or Color?

[flubby]

When do you guys know when to use black and white and when to use color? Is it an instinct? Sometimes I know that i should use black and white, but I don't see any real criteria or anything that would make it more... huh... theorical...

Huh... just my scientific self speaking... My artistic self is sleeping right now...

It's cloudy outside and I have an exam to do... at night... arrgh!

At least it is not Math...

Anyways... I went far away from the subject already. Goodbye. See ya later. I need to stop writting now...

[IcarusFree]

Flubby I think it comes from your gut feeling. Personally most of my photos begin as color photos and then I try som B&W conversion to see how they look.

I do not think tehre are hard and fast rules, but if you want to theorize about it i would say a good B&W has some common elements:
1. simple, yet strong and powerful composition. Without colors you need a strong composition to keep the viewer interested.
2. High contrast between light and shadow, although some fine gradations of gray on the sahows look great sometimes.

It also look weel on "action", photojournalist-type pictures, especially with some grain added.

my 0.02..

[JCW3]

I use to do film back in the day and then I would have to make a hard choice. I later did color and then would even do the darkroom magic to converter them (before the photoshop days).

Now I mostly shoot 100% color and then convert when I want or feel like it since it gives me the option of haveing both.

As for what goes B/W? Well I usually look for contrasty images that show a wide range of contrast. This often gives the image more of a POP and adds something to it. If the contrast is weak, many often feel the photo has a gray look to it.

Sometimes I do B/W for the classic look of it. Somethings just look nice in B/W like formal settings.

B/W is a art in itself, and I find what works in color will not in B/W and what works in B/W will not in color. And then you have those images that just look GREAT in both.

[flubby]

Thanks guys. That was enlightening...

But I wonder why my BW is not as good as yours... When I convert my pictures to BW in the computer or change the settings in my camera, they don't come up very well... :/ Is it because it is digital? But yours is digital too, so I wonder...

And what is better? To take the picture in color and convert to BW in the computer or to change the settings in my camera and take it already in BW? Do you see any difference in the quality?

[JCW3]

Originally posted by flubby
When I convert my pictures to BW in the computer or change the settings in my camera, they don't come up very well... :/ Is it because it is digital? But yours is digital too, so I wonder...

And what is better? To take the picture in color and convert to BW in the computer or to change the settings in my camera and take it already in BW? Do you see any difference in the quality?

Not really, I have seen some amazing work done with diginals as far as B/W goes. There will always be personal views, but in the right hands digital can do about anything that roll of B/W will do.

Again the subject means more than anything. I have alot of photos I would love to do in B/W, but sometimes they dont turn out the way I want.

One thing is once you convert a photo from B/W to color I would then recommend running levels. This helps level out the grays and boost the contrasted areas. I usually add a slight amount of noise to give it a classic b/w look.

But watch running levels or contrast, you will find that detail is quickly lost in b/w. Its always a fine line between looking good and looking blown. The tough part is finding that line with each photo.

As I posted before I always shoot in color and later convert. Some prefer to shoot what they want, but to me go with color and then change it if you want. With that you just killed to birds with one stone.

Another way of converting is saturation, but for me thats not as effective. But I would say its due to the fact I have not experimented enough.

[flubby]

One problem that I've found when converting to BW and using levels afterwards, is that the picture tends to get blue... :/ I don't know if that is because of my camera or my computer program, but it happens all the time. that's why I've been always using the settings in my camera. Also, sometimes it is pretty hard to choose between one with the levels fixed or not, cause it gets to darker and I lose too many details...

Oh... and I can't add "noise" with the program that I have... :/
Oh well...