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| This shot includes unattractive mixed lighting: blueish daylight and orange artificial light. Switching to mono overcomes this quickly and easily |
Back in the days of fi was a very specifi camera with a roll of black & white fi for the next 24 or 36 exposures you had no choice but to run with it. Of course, you c choice. You loaded your lm, shooting monochrome lm, and couldn’t see how your pictures were coming out while you were shooting, so you had to try to learn how the colourful world in front of you would translate into greyscale.
If you were really serious about the process, you’d carry around a set of colour lens filters for contrast control. You’d probably also set up your own darkroom for developing and printing your film. Indeed, to get the best results, you’d spend hours under a dim red safelight, dodging and burning your prints.
These days, of course, times have changed. Shooting monochrome on almost any digital camera is as simple as switching colour modes, which you can do on a shot-byshot basis almost as easily as changing the aperture or ISO. But when you do this, you may well find that the mono output is disappointing and lacking impact.
Chances are you might try it once when you first get the camera, but never again. Of course, it’s also simple to convert your pictures to monochrome in post-processing, with essentially the same control over how the final image will look as you’d get in the darkroom. This means that switching your camera to mono can appear pointless, especially if you shoot raw. Why shoot black & white in-camera when you can do it all later, with more control?
In fact, there are some very good reasons why you might decide to shoot mono in-camera. First, not everyone wants to shoot raw all the time and post-process every shot – it’s a time-consuming business. Second, even if you are planning on post-processing your images, there can be real value in using your camera’s mono mode to give an initial idea of how well your shots will work out, to help to fine-tune your compositions.
Finally, with the in-camera processing controls that are now available, and some of the more attractive ‘filter’ modes, it’s possible to get attractive results out of the camera with no further manipulation.
What’s more, if you shoot monochrome using either a compact camera or a compact system camera that uses electronic viewing, it’s possible to see exactly how your pictures will turn out before you press the shutter button. This can be useful, as it helps you ignore the distraction of strong colours when composing your images. You can also see more easily how different processing settings will impact your image. Much the same can be achieved by shooting with a DSLR in live view, as opposed to using the optical viewfinder.
In this article I’ll be looking in detail at shooting in monochrome mode, exploring the options available and offering some tips on how to get the best results.
HOW TO SHOOT MONOCHROME ON YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA
Setting your camera to shoot in black & white is usually very straightforward. Simply locate the camera’s colour mode setting, and change the output to monochrome. Different manufacturers call these settings by different names, and some also have several variants of their black & white mode. If in doubt, check your manual (as always).
It’s important to understand that, unlike with film, switching the camera to monochrome is purely a processing setting. The sensor is still recording images with full colour information, and if you record raw files they will still include all of it. It’s just the JPEG output that’s monochrome.
The manufacturer’s own raw-processing software will normally recognise your intention to shoot in mono, and display the images accordingly. However, if you’d rather have a colour version of the shot, it just requires changing the setting back. Third-party processing software will most likely display your files in colour, but will happily process them into black & white.
WHEN TO SHOOT MONO?
One question that beginners often ask is when should they use black & white, rather than colour. The simple answer is ‘whenever you like’ – there are no hard-and-fast rules. However, it’s important to understand that shooting in monochrome is a rather different art to working in colour, as some shots that look great in colour look dull in black & white, and vice versa. Indeed, getting effective results in
mono often requires a fair bit of practice.
mono often requires a fair bit of practice.
Shooting monochrome removes the distraction of colour from your photographs, reducing them to the essentials of light and shade. This means it’s naturally better suited to some subjects than others obviously, if colour is important to an image, such as red flowers against green foliage, then removing it can destroy the picture’s impact. But likewise, when colour distracts from the subject, shooting in mono can be a real improvement.
There are, however, some situations to which monochrome is particularly suited. For example, in dull weather, switching to black & white can give better results by emphasising the shape and form of your subjects. Meanwhile, in strong, bright light, it can emphasise the interplay of light and shade.
Monochrome can also come in handy under mixed lighting. If you have both natural and artificial light illuminating different parts of the scene, or different types of artificial light, then those areas of the image will show colour casts. This is something that our eyes and brains don’t perceive, so it looks particularly unattractive.
In some cases it can be fixed in post-processing, using local corrections to remove the strongest colour casts. But often a simpler solution is to convert to black & white, which removes the distraction of mixed lighting.
Switching to monochrome can also be useful when shooting under artificial light at high ISOs, particularly with low colour temperature sources like tungsten bulbs. Such light is strongly biased towards the yellow end of the spectrum, and lacking in green and blue. The result is that, when trying to make a correctly balanced colour image, the green and blue channels have to be strongly amplified, giving an unpleasant increase in image noise. But if you deliberately set the ‘wrong’ white balance and shoot in black & white, this can reduce such problems with noise.
IN-CAMERA MONOCHROME PROCESSING SETTINGS
Most cameras these days have plenty of settings for tweaking the look of your monochrome images, and while they give lots of control over how your pictures will turn out, they can equally look daunting for new users. Here we’ll take a look at what they do, and offer tips and recommendations on how to use them.
NOISE REDUCTION AND SHARPNESS
Tweaking noise-reduction and sharpness settings can accentuate or suppress noise, especially when shooting at high ISOs. To some extent this can mimic shooting with fast, grainy film. All cameras are different, so it’s difficult to make specific recommendations here. But try turning down the noise reduction and turning up the sharpening to get grainier, grittier images.
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