Any reason to shoot BW?

[Bryan Bedell]

I need to shoot some interior shots at a restaurant today with the ultimate goal of using them in a black and white collage where they will be aged (sepia-toned and creases and such added). I'm a designer so all that kind of stuff is easy for me in photoshop, and I'm familiar with the pros and cons of the many ways to convert a color photo to BW in photoshop, but my question is:

Is there any point at all in shooting sepiatone or black and white photos IN CAMERA? Seems to me the camera's just desaturating the photo, and I might as well shoot color so i can use the photos for other stuff later, right?

Bryan

[Bryan Bedell]

actually, just as i posted this, one benefit occurred to me: if I'm shooting in BW, i'd see the preview on-screen in BW, which might be helpful, since what works in color doesn't always work in BW. And maybe (if they're saved as grayscale and not RGB) the files would be a bit smaller. Any other ideas?

Bryan

[RafaPolit]

Hi Bryan,

If this still gets on time, I would stick to color and later on do the conversion in Photoshop. There is much more interesting options than only desaturating the image. You can work in LAB color mode for interesting results, and you can also use only one or two of the RGB colors for interesting effects. One last option, and the one I like the most is using two HUE/Saturation adjustment layers. Desaturate in the topmost (apllied using COLOR instead of Normal in the layers blendig mode) and change the hue in the lower one... this gives ghe best results in my opinion and the full method is explained here:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-black-white.htm

As I see it, shooting in B/W will only have that small advantage you talked about: preview, but then again, its not always true, as that would be the result without considering you can actualy vary hues or use only one color information or two to create the final B/W image. Shoot some B/W to have and idea of the overall lighting and then switch to Color and post process, thats what I would do.

Hope it helps,

Rafael Pólit (jr.)
Quito, Ecuador.