Another newbie question: why B&W mode?

Why do some DSLRs have a B&W mode? Is there any advantage to shooting in
B&W vs. shooting in color and converting to B&W in PhotoShop? Either way,
you're throwing away data, and it seems to make sense to throw it away as
late as possible. Or is there more to it than that?

 

No, advantage. Just like there's no advantage to shooting anything
but RAW. Remember JPEG throws away data also.


*****************************************************

"Vietnam is what we had instead of happy childhoods."

Tim Page in
"Dispatches"
by Michael Herr

 

I haven't tried B&W on my D200, but I started to use it on my old Nikon
995, which is a fairly noisy camera. Shooting at a meeting, having to
use ie 400 I slipped it into B&W. The pics were so much better than the
color images from the same camera. Much less noise, seemingly sharper
(less noise reduction?). Next step make the 995 an infrared only
camera.
Don't think there would be a noticable difference on the D200 as the
files are much cleaner. With the D200 you don't get into objectionable
noise until ie 1600.


Tom

 

Of course there are reasons to use JPG, e.g. when you only want to document
something and don't need RAW for manipulation. JPG is easier.

"Vietnam is what YOU GAVE US instead of happy childhoods."

 

What's to maninupulate in raw? Just run a batch action ACR of you
have the exposes right? Then another set of acts if you must have
JPEG with the sharpening you've found works best and its done. But you
still have the RAW for any shot that you thing needs or deserves more
than 8bits of lossy information.


*****************************************************

"Vietnam is what we had instead of happy childhoods."

Tim Page in
"Dispatches"
by Michael Herr

 

There's no *image* advantage to shooting anything but RAW. There is a
*rate* advantage to not shooting RAW, since the files are bigger and
take longer to write to the card, so the buffer takes longer to empty,
which may prevent your getting that key shot.

 

In message <>,

I don't know how it is actually done in the camera, but it is
theoretically possible that you could get a B&W JPEG of higher quality
than you could get from a color JPEG. If you shoot RAW, then you have
the original data, and can do anything with it.
--

 

Some people direct print from camera. In this case B&W mode proves useful.

 

When shooting in Raw + Jpeg I its nice to do it B/W.
I can directly see the result on screen, and later, get the best out of the
Raw file.
kr
Aad

 

B+W film had a bias towards blue. It was more sensitive. This meant dark
dense negatives in the blue area. This meant whited out skies and very bad
rendition of green. Yellow filters and green filters were used to counter
this. I beleive the B+W mode in cameras have colour filter 'options' that
is you select the 'filter' from the menu and not physically place one on the
camera. Many people prefer film for its 'true rendition' but the film
doesn't actually accurately record the scene. It has been discussed that
putting a preset adjustment in photoshop to 'correct' the colour rendition
when in fact what has happened is that the sensor registers the colours more
equally than the film. However film has been established for so long that
the rendition by film is considered THE way to record the image. All in all
b+w film settings in camera are an improvement on a desaturated image in
photoshop and the electronic equivalent of the 'filters' help but a genuine
green filter on the lens is still the way to go if you want to emphasise
certain tones in b+w. Of course if you are sufficiently skilled in
photoshop you could just use that. I have seen an 'S' shaped curve inserted
into photoshop graphical representations of colour to make it more 'film
like'.

 

There may be some small advantage to doing JPEG compression on a B&W
image vs. a color image. It'd certainly use less storage space.

If speed and sorage are not issues and you're shooting RAW then there
isn't much point to having the camera do it. If you're only
interested in B&W (such as for a newspaper) then you might as well let
the camera do it.

 

Since the camera sensors are already filtered for color anyway, there is
the advantage of having the color version (that may be useful) that you
can also convert to B&W in photoshop.

 

I just sold a 995 on Ebay by stressing the IR features. The 995 was one
of the last Coolpix cameras with "good" IR sensitivity. They filtered
MUCH LESS back then. There are a couple of guides online that talk
about how to do the the full conversion to IR (ie removing the last of
the IR block that it still has).

BTW, I located a hack where the 995 can be made to output an
undocumented RAW format as well....

http://www.burren.cx/photo/e950ir.html

 

Interesting the bayer filter doesn't work with IR so that would really
be much sharper.

 

Because it sells?

Because it is somewhat similar to using a SLR with B/W film?

Yes:
- no need to fire up PhotoShop (faster turn around time)
- direct feedback how the shot looks in B/W. Can you immediately
tell how everything will look in B/W?

If you want all you can get, use RAW and manually handle each
single image, converting it lovingly from RAW and photoshopping
out any problems.


If you have less time, (say, you are some reporter and (the best
of) your images of the game tonight _must_ be in tomorrow's
morning paper) shoot it right instead of photoshopping around
later (that always helps) and reduce your conversion steps to a
minimum, down to 'shoot JPEG' and 'print them as you shot them'
(and that often _is_ in B/W). Of course, doing it that way also
needs some skill --- as it did with analog film.

There are aftermarket focus screens with lines telling you what
will be chopped off left and right at some image formats, exactly
for this reason.

-Wolfgang