Seeing in black and white

There are several members here who regularly produce excellent B&W images. And occasionally one sees a posted image converted to B&W with great effect.
I have some B&W prints on my walls, mainly from AA, and I do appreciate them, but for the life of me when it comes to my own images I can neither "see" a good B&W photo, or convincingly convert a colour one into B&W
Question is can one learn to see in B&W?
What do you think?
Davex.

I think one can. I belong to a generation that started with B&W and coloured filters and learned that way.

Maybe you could try to set your camera to B&W and just go out and take pictures, I think you would soon find out you can see in B&W.

I find that when I'm using B&W film I look more for texture, light and shade.

When using colour I look for contrast.

When I try converting to B&W I never seem to be able to get it right,it seems that my mind can only work in one set and not as a general 'I can convert that' way.

Like you Dave, I struggle to convert images.

I think it is possible to anticipate the effect of a B&W rendering of the scene, it just takes practice.

One thing that I got used to in film camera days was having a fairly strong red filter on the camera. This was for the B&W film, but it meant that the viewfinder image tended not to have distracting colour - it was easier to compose based on the mass of tones in different places rather than the contrast between colours.

That should still work on a DSLR, as long as you then convert the rather red final image into B&W...

You missed off shape and form HG

yes.

although... playing around with the monochrome mixer in aperture is really fun and easy...

It's odd that others have the same experience. I've had a suggestion that I should just use a DSLR set to B&W (or convert in GIMP) but it just doesn't feel right to me. I like the experience of the older cameras and home processing film, and with Ilford HP5 you just have to follow the instructions to get perfect results.

Yes I think you can.

My approach is to look at the pic and concentrate on the colours and decide whether they are adding to the image. if they are not I remove them.

Many images work equally well in both colour and black and white, and generally in that I export a version of each as I can never make my mind up

Interesting thoughts chaps, I have a AA print of half dome on my bedroom wall, it is superb. I also have a colour JPEG which I took several years ago from roughly the same position, have tried many times but never managed to get my B&W conversion to even come close to the AA print.
Of course perhaps I am just being presumtous even thinking that I could approach the masters work

Davex.

Interesting stuff

I experiment now and again with B&W, although purely having taken the shot with colour in mind - I find that most of my shots taken like this don't convert well to B&W so the "thinking in B&W" sounds a good idea to me.

Funnily enough probably my best B&W image actually sat on the PC for 2yrs doing nothing as a poor colour shot having been taking in cloudy/flat lighting conditions - it does have quite a bit of texture and some stark contrast which probably helps the conversion. I'll certainly be thinking a little more about B&W when I'm out and about next time now

Simon

Yes I did 'spider, that's what makes B&W so challenging.

What can be a poor image when viewed in colour can suddenly become very interesting in mono!

But I still can't convert Colour to B&W!

Although I can go 1/2 way..

first you have to learn to ignore color in the sense that if you were completely color blind, how bright and reflective is the various subjects in the scene? then you have to look up something like Adams Zone system to figure out how you intend to expose for various tones within the subjects in the viewfinder. Lastly you need to know your color theory in order to understand HOW various color filters will effect the colors in the scene, because a color filter WILL change the tone of the subject.... for example a blue filter will darken a red tomato, a red filter will lighten the tomato... but wait... what about the green leaves if you add a green filter you will lighten the leaves while at the same time darkening the red tomato...


so whether digital or film... you need to know color theory to effectivly create black and white.

if the image above were to be filtered with a blue filter, then converted to b&w, the pistols (or is that anthers?) in that flower would be much much darker in the final b&w conversion, and as such they'd stand out more.....

It was a lot easier when you had an actual colour filter in front of the camera... Instant preview of how the tones would end up looking. I guess trying different b&w filters and seeing how things look in liveview would be interesting.

You can view filter effects in Photoshop CS and beyond.

In the Channels dialog box we can select red, green and blue and see the effects of those. In Channel Mixer we can mix any combination.

In Image>Adjustments>Photo Filter we have a variety of colour filters at our disposal.

Some of these things can also be done in earlier versions.

You could try to find a Monovue filter, which you peer through and it essentially reduces a scene to its tonal values. I bought one years ago when I was determined to try out an old Bolex P1 cine camera with B&W film. Typically, I never did.

They work quite well in bright conditions but the yellow/green filter is pretty dense and they're all but unusable in dark conditions. SRB still lists them -- link-- but says they're unavailable. I suspect any dark filter would do the same thing, but the rubber eyecup on the Monovue keeps out extraneous light.

As others have said, your best bet is to develop an eye for it, and lots of practice is the only way.

Al