B&W conversion SUPERIOR to "original"

Hello All,

When using my Canon A720 IS, I find that shots taken in colour, then converted to Black and White, using a simple program like Picassa, are actually far SUPERIOR to setting the camera to shoot black and white in the first instance.

I'm an old film camera user, and B&W conversions from colour negatives, or transparencies were generally not very acceptable.

Can someone please explain the reasons for this dichotomy ...it's counter-intuitive to me.

Thanks in advance, del Sol

I use photoshop to make black and whites. I think the camera shooting B&W is more like a desaturation than a black and white. When PS CS3 brought out the blakc and white conversion improvements black and whites could then still be adjusted by colour channel. This was a huge improvement over the old desaturation.
So I think the difference is your computer and its processors are superior to the camera's. This is one of the reasons RAW shots end up better than JPG shots...you have more image processing power with a PC than a camera.

The other reason is that to get a B&W print from a colour slide or negative, either you had to make an internegative/interpos​itive (maintaining the right white balance) or print on panchromatic B&W paper, which was a pain to work with. Printing directly onto "normal" B&W paper which isn't affected by the orange safelight means that oranges won't show well on the print. You can exercise full control if you knock down a colour image to a B&W using desaturation, LAB adjustments, or any of a number of tools to get the best results. An in-camera process has limited tools to deal with the process, so it's more akin to using a colour neg to make a B&W print on regular ortho paper.