Post by FocusPost by Dudley HanksPost by FocusIt's been said that B/W pictures are more pure or art, whatever, but I
always felt that color is more difficult to catch and please the eye.
After all, with B/W you only have to think about contrast, sharpness and
saturation. In color there's a whole new dimension.
Some colors together will give you a headache, but in B/W it looks fine.
Whitebalance is another problem.
Famous female photographer, Annie Leibovitz, even said she didn't know
how to make color pictures at first, because she was only taught B/W in
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/annie-leibovitz/life...
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Focus
In the world of film, colour processing definitely was more exacting than
BW. And, within the realm of colour, processing slides was even tougher
than negs. But, a lot depends on the desired result.
For instance, in my opinion, it's easier to capture the essence of a
festive scene with colour than it is with BW, especially in those scenes
where colourful costumes are present. BW can render the ocasion more
starkly than might be desired.
Take Care,
Dudley
True, but with different lights it's much easier in B/W, because you got
no worries about white balance.
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Focus
Yep, mixed lighting is much easier in BW. Also, when shooting portraits,
kids, etc, some skin conditions will stick out like a sore thumb (pun
intended) when shooting with colour, whereas BW can mask the condition
fairly effectively. Even poorly applied makeup often is less noticeable
with BW shots.
Going back to the film world, sandwich prints tended to be easier with BW as
well, since putting two colour negs on top of each other often tended to
have undesireable results due to unforseen additive or subtractive
filtration effects.
Do you mean the effects of imprecise registration?
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YOP...
That's not what I meant, but that is another area where BW is easier to work
with than colour. If you want to overlay one BW image over another and
there is a screen involved, the margin of error is a bit wider than when
working with colour, where the screens have to align darn near perfectly.
My comments, however, were directed more towards what happens when you
overlay two (or more) colour images with colour mixing that doesn't always
work out the way one would want.
For instance, let's say you have a nice portrait that was taken on slide
film with a really light background. Since the background is almost clear
on the slide, you decide it'd be interesting to sandwich the image with a
nice seascape. The fleshtones in the image are dark enough to block out
most of the background, but the subject has a yellow / gold neck-chain which
is quite light, so a good portion of the blue shines through. The end
result is that the subject ends up with a green chain in the final print.
This is an overly simplistic example, but it illustrates the type of effect
I was referring to.
Take Care,
Dudley
