In-Camera Black and White Photography

Introduction

A black and white photograph is a photograph that is stripped of all colors and left with a range of grey tones ranging from pure white to pure black, with continuous gradation in between. The best starting point for a high quality black and white (also called monochrome) photo is a perfectly exposed and well composed colored RAW image. Although cameras nowadays, especially top-notch models, include a ready-to-use black and white built-in setting, one should always choose to shoot in color, and should always choose to shoot in RAW.

In-camera: Black and White vs. Color

Though most cameras nowadays offer their built-in setting for a ready-to-use monochrome shooting feature, one should make it a habit to shoot in color, or if the need for an immediate black and white preview of a shot is required this shot should be taken in RAW rather than JPEG. Why is that? Most simply put, when you choose to shoot in JPEG format, what the camera does is that it makes a small, compressed version of an image file that is already processed before it is saved to the memory card. What that means is, once you choose to shoot in JPEG, you can no longer get back a lot of valuable image information. These are lost for good. Your camera processes the raw data and outputs a JPEG image file that discards all color information, and you then have to settle with a black and white version of a shot scene or subject according to what your camera manufacturer thinks represents a perfect version rather what you, yourself, think does. It is worth noting that, as a result of this discarding and data compression, JPEG is a small file format, it takes less space on your memory card, allowing you to shoot more images with your same card than does RAW format, and this is also why JPEG is often referred to as a “lossy” format.

On the other hand, if you choose to shoot in RAW, you preserve all data information and exposure details that are recorded on your camera sensor, and can later choose what to do with that and how to handle it. Using the RAW format guarantees that you are able to benefit and control exposure details and settings that you can’t do otherwise. You can adjust the white balance, the exposure, the temperature, and a lot of other things that JPEG doesn’t allow you to adjust. Think of shooting in RAW format as if being given a second chance to go back to that moment in time when you clicked that button and the shutter went up, to try and alter you decision at that second and produce a better exposure. It is always safer to work in RAW, and the quality is much better, for flexibility is a good thing but quality is even more important. A good thing to know as well is, when you need to process your RAW images you should do so in 16-bit mode rather than in 8-bit mode. That’s because in 8-bit mode only 256 levels or color shades are available per channel (the red, green, and blue channels), while in 16-bit mode you have over 65,000 levels in each channel, providing you with a whole lot more color details.

The best Black and White photo

There is so much more to the art of black and white than de-saturating an image of all colors and turning it into a grey scale. There are creative choices to be made in order to produce a creative monochrome image. These choices can come into play consciously with prior knowledge of what exactly you wish to achieve, or they can come unintentionally by trying and tweaking color and contrast and temperature and other stuff here and there, and playing with different channels while ending up with the perfect image. You may wish to create a heavily contrasting monochrome, you may choose to darken the sky or lighten skin tones, or you may choose to do some dodging and burning to different parts of your image. The possibilities are endless.

Tone and contrast

While a black and white image only consists of black and white colors and shades of grey, contrast plays an even more important role than in color photography, especially the tonal contrast in key parts of the image. Monochrome is stripped of all color and for that, subjects need to be well identifiable or else you would just end up with a photo that represents a huge grey mass with no truly identifiable features. Parts that look different in a color photo might look just the same after the grey scale conversion and this can diminish the message of your photo. You need to pay special attention to contrast, color, and detail if you intend for your photo to be represented as a monochrome.

Exposing for digital black and white photography

Film usually has more sufficient range to capture details than digital, and one can only rely so much on digital metering. The good news is though, digital photography allows the photographer the ability to review his results on the LCD screen of the camera right after taking the shot, and subsequently, make correcting adjustments if necessary. This serves in much the same way what the instant Polaroid used to in the old days, for it was often used to get a preview of a shot’s used settings outcome on the spot, to better tune those as to obtain the best exposure.

Black and white photography has always been seen not as what is captured, but rather as what is anticipated. Having said this, it is important for the black and white photographer to take a shot keeping in mind to gather as much later-needed information as possible, for a black and white photo is composed on the scene but is truly born in the darkroom. And this is what is meant by the popular saying associated with monochrome photography “Exposing to the right“. This is where the histogram on your digital camera’s LCD screen comes into play. The goal is to record the exposure that most expands the histogram towards the right (the highlights area), without losing details of the highlights (which is indicated by a spike in the histogram at the 255 brightness value). This ensures the maximum recorded highlights details that are used to record shadow details, and that digital noise is kept at its minimum. This works in pretty much the same way how black and white film shooters do in “exposing for the shadows” to make sure that details of the brightest areas get recorded on their negatives. Having said that, keep in mind that a correctly exposed image with black and white conversion kept in mind, has visible details in both the highlights and shadows areas (even if you sometimes cannot retain all shadow details), and that there should be no spike in the highlights area of the histogram (the image should not reach the point of over exposure). Exposing to the right means the histogram should only touch the end of the right side of the scale.

Shadows

In a perfect world, the perfect exposure would capture the brightest highlights and the darkest shadows details. But that is not possible with digital sensors (at least not just yet) because they don’t have the dynamic range of film, let alone black and white film. So for highly contrasted shadows and highlights in a scene, a black and white photographer should do what it takes to keep the highlights from burning out.

While there is a chance of underexposing a shot in low to retain all highlight details, which can cause loss in the dark details and introduce noise in the shadows areas, it is indeed a price to pay when shooting in poor light conditions. It is worth noting that some cameras offer an optional noise reduction feature that minimizes noise in specific areas within a shot that do contain digital noise (such as shadow areas) before it is processed and saved onto the camera’s memory card. There is also plenty of noise reduction software and Photoshop plug-ins that handle noise problems such as NoiseNinja, as well as Camera Raw with its luminosity sliders probably being the most effective.

Highlights

Highlights play a huge role in black and white photography which is not only limited to retaining image details and reducing noise, but that expands to their great impact on the mood of a photo and the communication it achieves with its viewers.

In reality it is the highlights that the viewer’s eyes are eventually drawn to, to get the meaning and the final message of an image. While shadows subtly offer hidden meaning and strength to the image in its details, it most often takes an experienced eye to recognize those. Viewers’ eyes initially hit the shadow areas in an image and then they start moving along till they reach the highlights, where they subconsciously expect to get what a photo is trying to tell. Failure in achieving fully and correctly detailed highlights would give the viewer the impression that there is something missing and that the picture is not complete because of the clipped highlights details.

Enhancing Digital Dynamic Range

Although digital photography don’t offer as wide a dynamic range as does film, and while monochrome photography depends more on dynamic range, this issue can actually be easily solved. One way around this problem, especially in the presence of huge differences between bright and dark areas in an image is, to take two shots of the same scene. Using a tripod in these cases can be a great help. The first shot will “expose to the right” (that is to the highlights in a scene), and the second will expose normally off the light meter indicator (that is off the mid-tones and shadows, leaving highlights to burn out). One can then use their editing software such as Adobe Photoshop to make a sandwich of the two shot , allowing the one exposed to the right represent the bright highlights area, and the second to represent the rest, all the while reserving all shadow and highlight details.

Another option if you can’t take two shots of the same scene, like if you have no tripod or if action is continuously altering the shot, is that now you can make use of Camera Raw’s fill light slider that automatically recognizes dark area and pumps up the lighting in those. Though this way can only bring so much dark details back to an image, it is a trick to use when you cannot work with sandwiching.

Conclusion

A black and white photo is not a representation of the real world as much as it is an endless number of possible interpretations of a message or a vision of it. And since the black and white photo is stripped out of all colors, it has to rely on its own and on its only available elements of texture, shape, form, and composition to make it through, and to actually succeed on making it as a quality photograph with a message and a meaning that is capable to make its way to the viewers’ eyes all the way to their minds and souls. And for that, a black and white photographer needs to be extra careful around details of the basic elements of their photo to make sure it is able to serve its purpose.

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