Monochrome in camera Yes or No?

If you want to shoot Monochrome (B&W) Would you have a "better" time taking all your pictures in color then putting them into Lightroom and applying the filter(Even if you had no desire for a colored image) or do you think you achieve more natural black and white from in camera then all you have to do is just tweak the already black and white image? (RAW)


So I guess my question is If you knew you wanted black and white images in the outcome would you set your camera to monochrome or would you just leave it in color then convert it over in editing?

Always do B+w with software as you can than tweak the colour channels for better b+w photos

Leave it in RAW, in its full glory, then convert in LR, playing with the RGB sliders as needed.

If it's an in-camera conversion, you're kinda stuck with what you got.

Well what I mean under picture style there is monochrome so it's Monochrome RAW so its still a raw photo just black and white already vs it being in raw color

Adamrhh wrote in post #15741806
Well what I mean under picture style there is monochrome so it's Monochrome RAW so its still a raw photo just black and white already vs it being in raw color

I don't believe that any RAW image file has the color information missing.

Its the file size and data the image carries. Try this, shoot RAW and convert to BW in any software you have. And shoot monochrome (BW) with camera settings. After that look at the file sizes and the 100% crops. In camera gives better resolution but less tweaking, RAW conversion loses some of the resolution but gives better tweaking.

Your canon picture style (monochrome or others) are only recognised in canons dpp, so your raw file will open in dpp in monochrome but can be changed back to colour,the jpeg will remain black and white. If you select mono in camera and open the raw file in any other converter it will open as a colour file

jaomul wrote in post #15741838
Your canon picture style (monochrome or others) are only recognised in canons dpp, so your raw file will open in dpp in monochrome but can be changed back to colour,the jpeg will remain black and white. If you select mono in camera and open the raw file in any other converter it will open as a colour file

Exactly. Raw is raw, color and all. With Picture Style set to Monochrome and shooting raw, your camera shows you a B&W jpg. The raw file is not affected by Picture Style settings. If you are going to shoot raw, shoot an unadjusted Neutral picture style. You'll get a more accurate histogram. The histogram is generated from the in-camera jpg, which IS affected by picture style.

jaomul wrote in post #15741838
Your canon picture style (monochrome or others) are only recognised in canons dpp, so your raw file will open in dpp in monochrome but can be changed back to colour,the jpeg will remain black and white. If you select mono in camera and open the raw file in any other converter it will open as a colour file

This.

It's also somewhat handy if I know I'm going to be doing a bunch of work in black and white, to go ahead and turn that picture style on, this will give me the back of the LCD in black and white; this can aid in visualizing things around you in black and white

Adamrhh wrote in post #15741768
..... or do you think you achieve more natural black and white from in camera then all you have to do is just tweak the already black and white image? (RAW)

As pointed out by others, you can't shoot a B&W RAW. The camera style settings such as Monochrome, Landscape etc only affect jpeg files (including the jpeg preview you see on the LCD). Setting the camera to Monochrome will have zero affect on the RAW file and the RAW will be displayed as a colour image when imported into your PP software (unless you use Canon's DPP software).

That fact aside my answer to your actual question is "no". You won't achieve a more natural B&W using the in-camera monochrome settings for exactly the same reason that in camera settings won't give you the best colour images. There are many different ways to process a black and white image. Different images will benefit from different approaches to processing. Lightroom includes 15 different B&W presets that you can select (and of course you can create any number of your own).

I do sometimes shoot B&W in Jpg with my own customized picturestyle on my 5Dmk3.

My rule usually is:
Am I being paid for this: Yes = Shoot Raw
No = Shoot Jpg (and SMALL)

I just can't stand having 4gb of party pics etc taking up my HDD space, as I know they will just end up on facebook etc.

I want to shoot in JPEG [So I can instantly transfer output to iPad4 and review - to date not seen a way to bring the Raw files into an iPad and then process there! - any ideas as an aside welcome].

If I choose colour neutral in JEPG and later on a PC remove the colour saturation in DPP
It only looks like 80% B&W.
Yet if I choose the picture style Monochrome and in DPP remove all the colour saturation they look much more like 100% B &W . Then they look good.
Can anyone explain this?

And therefore to OP my answer is:-
A) If I KNOW I want JPEGS, then I choose picture style, neutral setting MONOCHROME.
B) If I'm not sure at time of shooting, then colour L size JPEG, and later change in DPP, and then have to run it through Sony's version of DPP to do a second colour saturation removal - all very unsatisfactory!
Plus any tweeking needed in Photoshop elements 9 - as it came free with my new Laptop!
C) if I don't need instant Jpegs ref the iPad4 then I would shoot in RAW , neutral pic style, and use DPP. I don't own Light room sadly no cash for it.

Adamrhh wrote in post #15741768
If you want to shoot Monochrome (B&W) Would you have a "better" time taking all your pictures in color then putting them into Lightroom and applying the filter(Even if you had no desire for a colored image) or do you think you achieve more natural black and white from in camera then all you have to do is just tweak the already black and white image? (RAW)


So I guess my question is If you knew you wanted black and white images in the outcome would you set your camera to monochrome or would you just leave it in color then convert it over in editing?

If you want to shoot some B&W photo's, just use Monochrome RAW - that way you could have a represantable preview and still have the advantage of RAW in editing.

You really need color data to get best B&w results in post.

Or shoot with one of these. A Leica M Monochrom. Its a lot better than any conversions.

Leica M Monochrome and a digital enlarger so that I can expose onto proper B&W photo paper. Actually it would be nice to have a proper monochrome DSLR option, to shoot things that the M system is not so good at, after all they do not have any super telephoto lenses, and a 500-600 mm lens would be great for me.

Alan