Nature Photography Photo Workshop

8.3. DIGITAL CAPTURE FOR BLACK AND WHITE

There are two basic ways to make a black-and-white digital photograph: (1) capture it in color and convert in on the computer later, or (2) use the built-in processing in your camera to record black-and-white images to your memory card.

In most cases, you should capture in color and perform the conversion to black and white on the computer.

8.3.1. IN-CAMERA VERSUS COMPUTER PROCESSING

Many modern cameras provide options for making black-and-white images entirely within the camera. Some also offer special color processing effects. However, I strongly recommend that you always capture in straight, neutral color and convert your photos to black and white later during post-processing in the computer.

There are several reasons for this. First, most cameras can only capture JPEG images. In these cases, your camera captures the original RAW data in color, converts it to black and white using the camera settings, and then saves the JPEG to the memory card. The RAW data is not preserved. You lose lots of quality and lots of options for later processing.

As discussed in other chapters, you should capture in RAW format whenever possible.

The second reason not to process in-camera is that you might want to produce both color and black-and-white versions, as shown in 8-8 and 8-9. If you only have the converted version made in the camera, you're out of luck if you want to make a color version later.

Some dSLRs do allow you to capture in RAW format and ...