b/w photography

Out of context: Reply #15

  • Started
  • Last post
  • 28 Responses
  • J0

    The answer is...

    Colour film *evenly* captures the full spectrum, if it didn't, the colours wouldnt not look true to life (ie. your images might have a slight blue tint for example)

    Black and white film *does NOT evenly capture* the full spectrum. If you imagine a graph with the full colour spectrum running across the bottom axis, and a line running across, plotting a black and white films' sensitivity to those colours, it would waver up and down, not hugely but notably.

    Therefore, desaturating a coloured image will not look the same as an image catured on black and white film (setting your digital camera to mono will probably NOT emulate b&w film guys - sorry)

    The best way to emulate b&w film, is to use b&w film.

    The second best way, is to either manually bias the spectrum in photoshop before desaturating (tricky-ish), or just choose one of the R, G or B channels created by your digital camera and isolate it (only use that one!) - you may find the blue channel a little 'noisy' from digital pix.

    I Hope thats helpful.

View thread