I have decided that this July I would shoot black & white. I consider myself a colour shooter, so I don’t black & white often. The goal is trying something different, challenge myself. With the Fujifilm, switching to black & white change also in the viewfinder so what you see is what you get, mostly. I have either shot black & white on film, or sometime “fixed” digital images that were not shot especially in black & white, but that just got converted post processing. This picture of the CN Tower that was taken on such a gray day in December 2010 that it was colour-less even in the optical viewfinder:
Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105 f4 L IS USM — December 2010
Black & white post-processed.
So what makes shooting black & white different? First it’s about light, contrast and shapes. You can play with exposure to make the brights brighter. This will make me try something different.
On the Fujifilm X-E5 I shoot raw+JPEG with some Agfa Scala recipe, at least for now, I might change to something else. The goal is to try to use the files straight out of camera. With the Canon 5D Mark II, I’ll just post process as it doesn’t have the variety of Fujifilm film simulation. And with the Ricoh GR Digital 2, I can switch to black & white as it always have a JPEG when shooting raw.
Stay tuned.
