Thursday, April 27, 2017

Black & White Photography - In Camera

As you know (or you do now), the May contest theme is "Black & White." Not many folks take black and white photos anymore. When I got my first real cameral (at age 9), it used 620 film and it was mostly black and white film. Later on as I got serious about photography, an article I read  suggested that the novice photographer stick with the new color film. It was easier to take "good" photos in color than in black and white. Black and white was for professionals. I can see the point.

Mode Selector
Today very few folks are using film, let alone 620 roll film. Digital cameras are great at taking color pictures. Few shutterbugs know that digital cameras can be used to take black and white too. Those who want to experiment with black and white mostly rely upon digital software to convert their color images into black and white.

For the more daring, you can actually set up most digital cameras to capture black and white images. Check your owner's guide for selecting colors usually used to tint your photos. This can usually be found using one of the "creative" modes using full or partial manual settings (M, AV, TV, P etc.). Then use your function window to find the one that allows you to set color filters and BW settings.

Function Screen
Using the black and white settings allows you to experiment with other settings such as exposure/contrast, depth of field, and timed exposures, and producing images which are much smaller file sizes.

For more ideas and techniques using your camera in black and white mode watch these YouTube videos:

https://youtu.be/AF8DX5arNxE?list=PLiUuKwv5bk_wCxm-wNa5i2VDXVlx2Y216.

https://youtu.be/FXuX9ZHVq9A?list=PLiUuKwv5bk_wCxm-wNa5i2VDXVlx2Y216.

1 comment:

  1. Cool! In checking this out, I found all sorts of neat adjustments. Now we need to go out on a field trip so I can experiment.

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