How to shoot in black and white: camera modes, tones and visualisation

Is there a particular skill in shooting black and white images? There is, but it’s quite elusive and not immediately instinctive. After all, our eyes see in color, and there’s not a whole lot we can do about that. We can learn to ‘see’ black and white eventually, but it’s here that modern digital cameras can offer an invaluable head start.

• Articles in this black and white series
• Why photograph in black and white?
• How to shoot in black and white

Can you visualize color as shades of gray?

When I first got started in photography back in the days of analog film, black and white photography was taken every bit as seriously as color photography, particularly amongst enthusiasts, journalists, art photographers and ‘auteurs’. 

I do like the word ‘auteur’. The simplest definition is an artist with a distinct visual style. 

Anyhow, the big problem for anyone shooting in black and white is actually visualizing the scene or subject in black and white as you do it. It’s not as simple as trying to mentally translate tones and colors in shades of gray as you look at a scene, because actually the subjects, the framing, the angles… everything is different in black and white. You need to be able to visualize the black and white image even while you’re working out where to stand and what lens to use.

The advice I saw most often back in my early days was that you needed this black and white visualization skill, but there was not a whole lot of concrete information about how you did it. The implication seemed to be that if you did it for long enough you would eventually figure it out. Hmm.

But perhaps the key thing here is that digital cameras have made this not just possible but easy. For all that traditionalists might complain about the loss of the old analog skills, materials and processes, digital cameras do achieve this one crucial thing that can help all black and white photographers.

Black and white in-camera

Any digital camera will have a black and white photo style, often more than one, and sometimes customizable with all sorts of different toning, contrast, clarity and other adjustments. Is this enough to produce satisfying, finished black and white images straight from the camera? Sometimes maybe, but on the whole I’d say probably not. The thing about black and white is that much of the work is done later in the darkroom or your photo editing software.

But the point here is that your digital camera makes visualizing in black and white simple. If you’re using a DSLR you’ll have to wait until the image you captured is displayed on the rear screen (the optical viewfinder will still show you a real-world color image, of course). But if you’re using a mirrorless camera, or a compact camera, both the viewfinder and the rear live view screen will show you a black and white image. And that is just fantastic.

You don’t have to use this image later for all your editing. I like to use a black and white photo style but shoot RAW files, and I’ll come on to that shortly. My point is that these black and white picture styles show you the world in black and white. Now I consider myself a pretty fair black and white photographer, but I’m not going to turn down a little extra help in visualizing the photo. There may be those who feel they can visualize in black and white perfectly well without any artificial aids. Good luck to them.

Light

So whether you’re a good black and white visualizer or you’re using your digital camera’s black and white modes to help you, then one of the key things for black and white photography is light. In color, the colors in a scene can carry a photo taken in flat light perfectly well on their own. You can’t get away with that in black and white. You have to know what the light is doing, where it’s coming from and how to use it to enhance your photo. Photography is, very literally, ‘painting with light’, and in black and white photography, the light is everything. 

It’s the light that creates shapes, creates contrast, brings out textures. Light is also a very emotional thing – the character of the light can completely change the mood of a picture and how it makes the viewer feel. People who look at your pictures might feel that ‘light’ and ‘emotion’ are just silly, arty affectations, but what they don’t understand is that they affect how they feel about pictures very deeply.

So, just to get back to basics, light is very important in black and white photography. It controls, and establishes, and changes everything. And if using your camera’s black and white mode makes this easier to see, then use it.

Composition

Composition is a very deep topic. My opinions might be different to yours. There are lots of dull, formulaic rules that can produce images that don’t offend and might do OK in camera club competitions but will never get anyone excited. (I did warn you about my opinions, right?)

I would suggest that you look at your pictures, other people’s pictures, and pictures on the Internet to see what excites you. Pay no attention to what people say is ‘right’ but only to what you are excited by.

Personally, I think the rule of thirds is massively overrated. If that’s all you’ve got, then I think you’re in trouble. I love the strangeness of completely symmetrical images, or images that look weird, or odd, or unbalanced. 

I think the idea of the classical ‘golden mean’ (look it up) is hopelessly simplistic and contrived. There are FAR too many things going on in ANY photograph for such a thunderously dreary and arcane analysis. Quoting the golden mean may make you look more intellectual – it certainly trumps the rule of thirds for academic gravitas – but I would argue that its relevance in practical photography is limited. And I’m being polite.

Another one. There’s this idea that portraits should allow space for the subject to ‘look into’ the frame. It’s supposed to be more pleasing, more balanced. What if you don’t want to be pleasing and balanced? What if you WANT your pictures to look off-balance and edgy? Exactly.

Leading lines do work, for sure. These are lines that ‘lead you into’ the picture or the thing you want your viewers to notice. Yep, I have no problem with leading lines. They are a strong compositional device that you can use time and time again.

But if I have to nail my colors to the mast and say what compositional effects I am in favor of and not just what I’m against, then here goes.

For me, it’s all about shapes, tones, balance. I like to use lines to lead the viewer’s gaze towards key elements in the scene, and I like to use the idea of shapes (and contrast) and balance to establish the relationships between objects and spaces.

So apologies, that’s been a bit of a long journey to get back to what we were talking about. In black and white, composition is both crucial and controllable – hurrah! And if your camera has a black and white mode that can help you visualize this, then why not use it?

Do you still need filters or can you do it in software?

Old-school black and white photographers will be very familiar with black and white filters, or ‘contrast’ filters. By using filters of different colors you can change the way colors in the scene translate into shades of gray. For example, a red filter will pass through red light but hold back light of other colors. With a red filter, blue skies darken and can become almost black. With a yellow or yellow-green filter, blue skies darken slightly less but foliage becomes lighter – this is a great filter for landscape photography. Once you’ve made appropriate adjustments to the exposure – often called the ‘filter factor’ you can achieve some striking effects. 

There are many other filter types and effects, but the point is whether this is still relevant for digital cameras today? Well, it is and it isn’t.

By using these filters you can change how the black and white image will look on your screen and how the in-camera JPEG will look, but what’s happening behind the scenes is not the same as shooting with traditional black and white film.

That’s because almost all digital cameras are designed to capture color using a ‘color filter array’. This places a color filter over each photosite on the sensor so that the photosite captures only red, green or blue light. When the image is processed, this color information is interpolated, or amalgamated, to create full-color information for each photosite (or ‘pixel’, in the final image).

Modern digital camera sensors aren’t really set up for black and white. You can’t turn off the color filter array just to shoot in black and white, so you have to put up with an imperfect interpolation process and make the best of it

What happens with a digital camera if you use a traditional black and white filter is that a lot of the photosites won’t be used. So let’s take a red filter as an example. With this over the lens, only the ‘red’ photosites on the sensor will receive any light. That’s actually just one photosite in four! The camera’s processor (or your raw processing software) will figure it all out and interpolate the rest of the image data, but you haven’t really gained anything by using the filter that you couldn’t achieve with more control in your photo editing software later.

What photo editing software does is give you the chance to ‘mix’ the colors manually to produce the black and white image. This gives a whole lot more control over the outcome. and while you do lose some quality if you lean too heavily on specific color ranges, it’s no worse than if you’d used a physical filter.

But there are a couple of filter types for color photography that you might also want to consider for black and white. A polarizing filter will darken blue skies and suppress reflections in black and white just as it will in color, and graduated filters can help prevent bright skies from overexposing in landscape shots.

Neutral density (ND) filters are also just as useful in black and white. They cut the amount of light passing through the lens to allow longer exposure times and deliberate movement blur in skies or water.

There’s also a new type of ‘black mist’ filter which can soften highlights, reduce the depth of shadows and lower contrast overall, which could be an interesting look in black and white – though some might prefer to create this kind of effect with a little more control in software later on.

RAW vs JPEG for black and white

I would definitely recommend using your camera’s black and white picture mode(s) for black and white photography because these will really help you compose images in a way that’s going to work well in black and white.

What’s happening here is that the camera is capturing a full-color image (they always do) but converting it into black and white according to the picture style you’ve chosen. Now, if you’ve set your camera to shoot JPEG images only, then this is all you will get – this processed black and white version. However, if you set your camera to shoot RAW images, or RAW+JPEG, then something different happens.

Here, the camera will capture a RAW image only but still show it as if you had applied the black and white conversion. Your camera will show a black and white image, but your RAW software, for example Lightroom, Capture One, ON1 Photo RAW and others, will still show a full-color RAW image.

This is confusing if you’re not expecting it. You shot what you thought was a black and white photo but your software displays a color image. This is because most software will typically ignore any picture style you chose in the camera and show the full color RAW image.

That’s what happens if you set your camera to RAW capture. If you choose the RAW+JPEG option then you get two images. One is a JPEG image processed by the camera which will actually be in black and white. The other will be a RAW file which will be displayed in color regardless of what you chose on the camera.

RAW+JPEG is my recommended camera setting. That way, you get a black and white JPEG image processed according to the camera settings, plus a full-color RAW file you can process just as you wish. It’s the best of both worlds.

The principle reason for shooting RAW is that it gives you a ‘digital negative’ to work from. This has a wider range of tones than any in-camera JPEG, giving you more headroom to fully explore the tonal manipulations and local adjustments that can make black and white photography so powerful.