TechRadar: All latest feeds Black and white photography tips
Set up your camera
Shooting great black-and-white images isn't just about converting your images in Photoshop or Elements, it starts before you press the shutter release.
Choosing the right subjects and lighting conditions is the first step, and bright sunny days can be perfect for monochrome shots. Next, it's essential to set up your camera correctly for the best results and get a better idea of how the final image will look before you shoot.
We can't promise that you can do everything to get stunning monochrome photographs in-camera, so you'll need to use some basic software techniques to improve your shots. Follow our advice, and you'll get better black-and-white results and save yourself time by using the right settings and shooting techniques.
Set up your camera
Shooting black and white when it's bright and sunny may seem counter-intuitive, but there are plenty of reasons it's a great option. Bright sunshine creates strong shadows, which produce really striking black-and-white images.
Similarly, fluffy white clouds against a blue sky can look stunning in black and white photography. However, the high-contrast light produced by intense, direct sunshine means that you have to pay attention to your exposure.
In general, you should try to keep detail in the highlights, in the same way that you would when shooting colour images.
Shades of grey
One of the trickiest aspects of shooting in black and white is understanding how the colours in the subject will translate into different shades of grey in your final image.
Selecting the monochrome Picture Style or Picture Control will give you the ability to see exactly how your shot will look.
Once you've selected the monochrome Picture Style, you can preview how the image will look by using Live View, rather than an optical viewfinder. You can also review your images in black and white to give you instant feedback for those that will work in monochrome, and those that won't.
Step by step: Use Picture Styles
1. Set the Picture Style
You can set the monochrome Picture Style or Picture Control in the camera settings menu of most cameras. For your first steps in black and white photography, leave it on the default settings, without any filters or toning applied to the image.
2. Switch to Live View
Using Live View or an electronic viewfinder, instead of the optical viewfinder, enables you to preview the scene in black and white. This makes it much easier to get a feel for how the tones and colours in the scene will translate in mono.
3. Take a test shot
Live View can give you a good idea of how the image will look, but you'll find that taking a test shot and reviewing it on the rear LCD will often make it easier to really assess the success or failure of the image in black and white.
Black and white photography: Choose your subject
The key to successful black and white images is a combination of finding the right subjects, the right lighting and using some simple camera techniques.
Let's start with how to spot subjects and scenes that will work well in black and white.
The first step is recognising the best lighting conditions. One of the essential elements for adding impact to your images is the contrast between light and shade.
Bright sunlight is perfect for creating dark shadows, which create strong lines and graphic elements for your mono shots. To make the most of the shadows, try shooting with the sun just behind the subject so that the shadows are in the foreground of your image.
You don't have to stop there, though, because you can also use these shadows as a subject in themselves. Shooting just the shadow, rather than the subject that has created it, can produce abstract and surreal black-and-white images.
Textures and tones
As well as strong graphic elements, the more subtle appearance of textures and tones can also help to add depth and interest to mono images.
Strong side lighting, on a bright, sunny day will help to bring out texture in the subject, while a softer, more diffuse light such as shooting when it's cloudy is best for capturing subtle tones.
Because you can't use colours to help the composition, black and white images can appear much flatter and less interesting than the scene in front of you.
Using the monochrome Picture Control will help you to get a good idea of how the scene will look in black and white, but remember that you can also add impact to your images by increasing the contrast.
You can do this both in-camera using the contrast adjustments in the Picture Style settings, or later on in your processing software. But even the most skilful image processing isn't a substitute for good camera technique, composition and the right lighting conditions for successful shots.
Top black and white photography tip: using the histogram display
When using the monochrome Picture Style, the histogram displayed on the camera is generated from the black-and-white JPEG image.
So, while it's still useful for assessing the overall exposure, when you open the raw file it will display the colour histogram.
How to learn what works in black and white
You can shoot any subject in black and white, but it's not always the best option.
Sunrise or sunset
You will lose much of the impact when the colours and tones are crucial to the mood of a scene, such as sunrise or sunset.
Colour contrast
Scenes that rely on strong colour contrasts such as the red poppy in this shot don't work well in mono.
How to take dramatic black and white shots
Back in the days of film, you could control the way that different colours were translated into black and white by using coloured filters in front of the lens.
These traditional filters don't work with digital cameras. Instead, you can alter the contrast of your black and white images by using the filter effects that are available in the monochrome Picture Style menu.
Filter effects
These filter effects give the same results as traditional filters, so they lighten areas that are the same colour as the 'filter' and darken areas of the opposite colour.
For example, using a red filter effect will produce a black-and-white image where the blue areas are dark, and yellow and red areas much lighter than an unfiltered black and white image.
You'll find all of these filter effects in the detailed menu in the monochrome Picture Style or Picture Control settings.
How to use real filters for black and white photography
There are two main types of filter you can use to get good monochrome results. The first is a polariser, which can help you to add contrast to skies and cut out reflections in non-metallic objects such as water.
These two effects will help you to get much more punchy, high-contrast mono images in-camera.
The other filter for shooting landscapes is a neutral density grad filter. This filter, which is half dark and half clear, is perfect for reducing the contrast between the sky and the foreground.
Like when shooting colour images, an ND grad filter enables you to avoid over-exposing the sky or underexposing the foreground in your mono shots.
This can save you loads of time processing and editing your shots to darken or lighten certain areas.
Top black and white photography tip: preset modes
You can create custom or user-defined Picture Styles on many cameras. You normally have to access the Save/Edit controls through the shooting menu, then select the monochrome Picture Style and the filter effect you want.
Some models give you the option to give this user setting a name, such as 'mono red filter' so you can easily find it among the other styles.
How to shoot infrared
The inky black skies and high-contrast look of mono infrared is a sure-fire way to give your images impact, but you need the right conditions, and a special filter to get the best results in-camera.
An infrared filter blocks out most of the visible light from entering the lens, but allows infrared light through, so it's almost impossible to see through the camera to focus, and your camera's meter will struggle to measure the infrared light accurately.
This means you'll need to use a tripod and compose your shot before you fit the filter to the lens. You should then set the focus and exposure manually.
Using an infrared filter will produce odd-looking results if you shoot in colour. The image will be completely red, with no other colours, so it's much easier to predict the end result and see the effects by shooting in a monochrome Picture Style.
Infrared filters
There are several types of infrared filter, in both square and round screw-in designs. On a standard digital camera they all have a similar effect.
Hoya produces the R72 in a range of sizes that screws onto the filter thread of your lens. Cokin offers the Infrared 89B for its three different systems, the A, P and Z-Pro. They shouldn't cost more than about £30 (around US$46, AU$64).
The key to shooting infrared black and white is the weather conditions, because this will influence how much infrared light there will be for you to shoot.
Infrared light is essentially heat, so there's much more infrared light around on a warm, sunny day than when it's overcast and cold. This means that summer is the ideal time to try infrared, especially when the sky is blue, and trees and plants have plenty of foliage.
Top black and white photography tip: Get the infrared look
You can get a similar look by applying an infrared effect in software. In Photoshop CS4 or later and Elements 11, select the infrared setting from the preset options in the black-and-white conversion.
You can fine-tune the effect to adjust how colours are converted.
Step by step: Infrared filters
1. Frame your shot
With the infrared filter over the lens it's extremely difficult to see through the viewfinder. This means that you need to put your camera on a tripod and then frame your shot before fitting the filter in place.
2. Fit the filter
Once you've fixed the camera in position, you can fit the infrared filter. If you're using one of the square filter systems, slot the filter in place without moving the camera. For a screw-in filter, you need to attach the filter carefully.
3. Set up the camera
Set the camera to manual focus, and also manual exposure mode. With the ISO set to 200, set an exposure of 10 secs at f/16. If you're shooting in bright sunlight Take a test shot and alter the shutter speed as necessary.
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