Black & White In Color
October 5, 2015 6:48 AM Subscribe
One of my biggest pet peeves in art is the lazily-desaturated DSLR video. "Black & White In Color" is my personal response to treating black and white as an editing afterthought.Visual artist Julianna Thomas reminds us that some things really are black and white. (SLVimeo)
Quite beautiful! It says this is the first of a pair, so I'll be interested to see what the companion piece looks like.
posted by xingcat at 7:31 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by xingcat at 7:31 AM on October 5, 2015
I think she has somewhat a point re:lazy desaturation. It's really annoying. I see this a lot in still digital photography, where a very obviously color photo is simply converted to b/w, and festooned with "retro" or "classic" tags.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:38 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by Thorzdad at 7:38 AM on October 5, 2015
As a thesis, however, I'm not sure she made her point that Black & White as an editing decision is a poor second choice.
I think it's more the "lazily-desaturated" bit she is getting at, not exactly people who shoot in colour and turn to B&W in post. I've seen my share of videos where black and white was simply done by de-saturating footage, and everything looked fuzzy and messy because of that - to make it work properly, from my experience, it takes a lot of brightness/contrast/gamma/exposure fiddling, sometimes differently on each color channel to get real good results.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:42 AM on October 5, 2015 [8 favorites]
I think it's more the "lazily-desaturated" bit she is getting at, not exactly people who shoot in colour and turn to B&W in post. I've seen my share of videos where black and white was simply done by de-saturating footage, and everything looked fuzzy and messy because of that - to make it work properly, from my experience, it takes a lot of brightness/contrast/gamma/exposure fiddling, sometimes differently on each color channel to get real good results.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:42 AM on October 5, 2015 [8 favorites]
Can someone show some examples of "lazily-desaturated" vs. good black and white photography? As a non-photographer, I don't really understand how you'd be able to tell the difference.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:52 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:52 AM on October 5, 2015
Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes reference
posted by JohnFromGR at 7:57 AM on October 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by JohnFromGR at 7:57 AM on October 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
I'm not much of a photographer, but I believe that a problem with "lazily desaturated" color photography is that different B&W films have different sensitivities to different colors. Tri-X, for example, was relatively insensitive to red, so reds would come through especially dark (IIRC).
There are photo filters that will convert color digital photography to B&W to mimic the responses of different films, which might qualify as non-lazy desaturation.
posted by adamrice at 8:10 AM on October 5, 2015
There are photo filters that will convert color digital photography to B&W to mimic the responses of different films, which might qualify as non-lazy desaturation.
posted by adamrice at 8:10 AM on October 5, 2015
This is poetry.
posted by Bob Regular at 8:12 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by Bob Regular at 8:12 AM on October 5, 2015
Frances Ha was a very muddy, flat b&w conversion. This may have been a stylistic decision by Baumbach, though.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:20 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:20 AM on October 5, 2015
Nice video.
I usually prefer B&W photography, but shoot in Color, in the first place because why not? (unless I specifically need to see how something looks in B&W while I'm shooting) then in Lightroom I convert it into B&W, choosing a different 'filter' to bring out whatever parts of the picture I want. It's a good workflow, because you can tweak a lot when converting to B&W just by choosing a simulated filter.
posted by signal at 8:29 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I usually prefer B&W photography, but shoot in Color, in the first place because why not? (unless I specifically need to see how something looks in B&W while I'm shooting) then in Lightroom I convert it into B&W, choosing a different 'filter' to bring out whatever parts of the picture I want. It's a good workflow, because you can tweak a lot when converting to B&W just by choosing a simulated filter.
posted by signal at 8:29 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you've got a digital camera, the pictures/video are always going to start out as color; it's not like you can buy a B&W digital camera.
posted by octothorpe at 8:33 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 8:33 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Can someone show some examples of "lazily-desaturated" vs. good black and white photography?
I went out in search of a tutorial or two that would explain the whole thing and give good examples, but I'm missing some spring in my Google step this morning. I did find a post that explains why it's not best to "just desaturate", and its single example when compared to the better examples is pretty instructive: The "bad" example is muddy. The "good" examples are crisp.
I recall a time when "don't just hit desaturate" was a common piece of advice in beginning digital photography tutorials. So much so that my initial impression of this post (before going to watch the video and seeing what she was getting at) was a little eye-rolly. Having watched the video, I can see that her point is a somewhat different one.
One kind of cool thing is that "digital giveth, and digital taketh away."
The "taketh away" part is that people take a photo or shoot a video and hit the desaturate button as a way to kind of add profundity. To someone moving in professional circles, I can see how that'd be annoying. I wish people would sort of contain their disdain for it when it's just someone doing a thing on Instagram.
The "giveth" part is that it's super easy to learn about some of the principles involved here. For instance, if you have the patience to download a demo copy of Lightroom, it comes with a bunch of "B&W" presets you can apply (and remove) to a bunch of images. They can help you explore how different tone choices can affect the look of a photo. You can just pick one you think is interesting, turn down the saturation using the saturation tool, save a copy, then revert and cycle through the B&W presets to see how much the image changes from filter to filter.
I wouldn't argue that those presets are any less lazy. The point, rather, is to show how much more dynamic a black and white image can look (for good or ill ... portraits are really informative in this regard because of the way skin changes) if you do more than just suck all the color out of it.
posted by mph at 8:38 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I went out in search of a tutorial or two that would explain the whole thing and give good examples, but I'm missing some spring in my Google step this morning. I did find a post that explains why it's not best to "just desaturate", and its single example when compared to the better examples is pretty instructive: The "bad" example is muddy. The "good" examples are crisp.
I recall a time when "don't just hit desaturate" was a common piece of advice in beginning digital photography tutorials. So much so that my initial impression of this post (before going to watch the video and seeing what she was getting at) was a little eye-rolly. Having watched the video, I can see that her point is a somewhat different one.
One kind of cool thing is that "digital giveth, and digital taketh away."
The "taketh away" part is that people take a photo or shoot a video and hit the desaturate button as a way to kind of add profundity. To someone moving in professional circles, I can see how that'd be annoying. I wish people would sort of contain their disdain for it when it's just someone doing a thing on Instagram.
The "giveth" part is that it's super easy to learn about some of the principles involved here. For instance, if you have the patience to download a demo copy of Lightroom, it comes with a bunch of "B&W" presets you can apply (and remove) to a bunch of images. They can help you explore how different tone choices can affect the look of a photo. You can just pick one you think is interesting, turn down the saturation using the saturation tool, save a copy, then revert and cycle through the B&W presets to see how much the image changes from filter to filter.
I wouldn't argue that those presets are any less lazy. The point, rather, is to show how much more dynamic a black and white image can look (for good or ill ... portraits are really informative in this regard because of the way skin changes) if you do more than just suck all the color out of it.
posted by mph at 8:38 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
If you've got a digital camera, the pictures/video are always going to start out as color; it's not like you can buy a B&W digital camera.
That's true, but it reminds me of a pretty fun tutorial for the Fuji X100 you could probably apply to other cameras with digital viewfinders. It showed how to see in black and white by shooting JPG+RAW.
By setting the JPG preset to one of the camera's black and white modes, the default electronic viewfinder view becomes a live black and white image, with a RAW image captured in the background with all the information. The idea was to help the photographer see the compositional considerations of black and white photography more easily.
posted by mph at 8:55 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
That's true, but it reminds me of a pretty fun tutorial for the Fuji X100 you could probably apply to other cameras with digital viewfinders. It showed how to see in black and white by shooting JPG+RAW.
By setting the JPG preset to one of the camera's black and white modes, the default electronic viewfinder view becomes a live black and white image, with a RAW image captured in the background with all the information. The idea was to help the photographer see the compositional considerations of black and white photography more easily.
posted by mph at 8:55 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I didn't mean my comment to negate anything that the artist in the post is saying. Just pointing out that you're always going to be converting from color when you're working with digital. One big issue is that the camera/phone companies optimize the settings for color so just desaturating isn't generally enough and as mph says above, you need to do quite a bit of work in something like Lightroom to fix the contrast, highlights, shadows, etc to make a decent B&W image.
posted by octothorpe at 8:58 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by octothorpe at 8:58 AM on October 5, 2015
If you've got a digital camera, the pictures/video are always going to start out as color; it's not like you can buy a B&W digital camera.
You can, but you have to pay Leica prices for it.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:02 AM on October 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
You can, but you have to pay Leica prices for it.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:02 AM on October 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
If you've got a digital camera, the pictures/video are always going to start out as color; it's not like you can buy a B&W digital camera.
You can, but you have to pay Leica prices for it.
I didn't mean my comment to negate anything that the artist in the post is saying. Just pointing out that you're always going to be converting from color when you're working with digital.
Not strictly speaking correct. In fact, all single-sensor Bayer-array (the most common form of digital camera sensor on the market today) sensor cameras are inherently monochrome, but a color filter array is used to basically infer the proper color for each pixel. Doing so actually means some loss of resolution (my apologies to people who can explain this better).
Some companies will modify your camera to remove the color array, so it becomes a monochrome camera (and this won't necessarily mean Leica prices, either) at a higher resolution than the equivalent camera in color would have been. Note that there are other ways to get color; three-chip video cameras essentially used a sensor for each primary color, and there's the competing Foveon sensor array which used multiple levels to get pixels for each color. Sigma sells cameras with the Foveon array and they tend to render color differently; some people like them better. And all of this doesn't even mention infrared or UV photography and the ability to convert your camera to infrared or UV, though often that won't necessarily strictly be B&W, despite appearing as such.
Obviously not really mass-market options, but I felt compelled to point out that there ARE pure B&W cameras, not necessarily made by Leica at the corresponding ludicrous prices, and that in fact most cameras start out as black and white before the color array and hardware/software do their job.
I will say also that I have seen a great deal of black and white images that communicated to me that the photographer had a fetish for B&W or didn't know how to handle color, or, alternatively, thinks things "look cool" without color. As with most things, B&W has its place and can be done poorly OR well. There are multiple paths to B&W from color, but simply moving the saturation slider is probably the laziest, crappiest way to do it - and it wouldn't replicate what a B&W camera sees or what an animal without color vision would see.
posted by Strudel at 10:35 AM on October 5, 2015 [8 favorites]
You can, but you have to pay Leica prices for it.
I didn't mean my comment to negate anything that the artist in the post is saying. Just pointing out that you're always going to be converting from color when you're working with digital.
Not strictly speaking correct. In fact, all single-sensor Bayer-array (the most common form of digital camera sensor on the market today) sensor cameras are inherently monochrome, but a color filter array is used to basically infer the proper color for each pixel. Doing so actually means some loss of resolution (my apologies to people who can explain this better).
Some companies will modify your camera to remove the color array, so it becomes a monochrome camera (and this won't necessarily mean Leica prices, either) at a higher resolution than the equivalent camera in color would have been. Note that there are other ways to get color; three-chip video cameras essentially used a sensor for each primary color, and there's the competing Foveon sensor array which used multiple levels to get pixels for each color. Sigma sells cameras with the Foveon array and they tend to render color differently; some people like them better. And all of this doesn't even mention infrared or UV photography and the ability to convert your camera to infrared or UV, though often that won't necessarily strictly be B&W, despite appearing as such.
Obviously not really mass-market options, but I felt compelled to point out that there ARE pure B&W cameras, not necessarily made by Leica at the corresponding ludicrous prices, and that in fact most cameras start out as black and white before the color array and hardware/software do their job.
I will say also that I have seen a great deal of black and white images that communicated to me that the photographer had a fetish for B&W or didn't know how to handle color, or, alternatively, thinks things "look cool" without color. As with most things, B&W has its place and can be done poorly OR well. There are multiple paths to B&W from color, but simply moving the saturation slider is probably the laziest, crappiest way to do it - and it wouldn't replicate what a B&W camera sees or what an animal without color vision would see.
posted by Strudel at 10:35 AM on October 5, 2015 [8 favorites]
it's not like you can buy a B&W digital camera.
You can, but you have to pay Leica prices for it.
Leica, or RED. Just shot with the latter - very satisfying, information-rich material, allowing a lot of subtlety at the grade. (And the up-front constraint can be very useful to stem the indecisionism rampant in certain industries.)
(I found the point the linked video was trying to make - not so clear.)
posted by progosk at 10:38 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
You can, but you have to pay Leica prices for it.
Leica, or RED. Just shot with the latter - very satisfying, information-rich material, allowing a lot of subtlety at the grade. (And the up-front constraint can be very useful to stem the indecisionism rampant in certain industries.)
(I found the point the linked video was trying to make - not so clear.)
posted by progosk at 10:38 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
it's not like you can buy a B&W digital camera.
Amended to: It's not like I can afford to buy a B&W digital camera.
posted by octothorpe at 10:49 AM on October 5, 2015
Amended to: It's not like I can afford to buy a B&W digital camera.
posted by octothorpe at 10:49 AM on October 5, 2015
There's a special place in hell reserved for those who do bicubic-resampling. Discuss!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2015
posted by blue_beetle at 10:50 AM on October 5, 2015
Desaturation is the more "correct" way to convert to black and white. The lazy way is to just average the RGB values for each pixel i.e. (R+G+B)/3 which looks a bit different. Perhaps she means that if you were actually shooting for B/W you would light differently, and would often be aiming for more contrast?
Sometimes I like to convert a color still to B/W in Photoshop by just choosing which channel looks the best as a B/W image. It's equivalent to shooting B/W through a red, green or blue filter in terms of how things look, which isn't something people actually do much these days. It gives a slightly surreal effect without looking fake.
posted by w0mbat at 11:14 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sometimes I like to convert a color still to B/W in Photoshop by just choosing which channel looks the best as a B/W image. It's equivalent to shooting B/W through a red, green or blue filter in terms of how things look, which isn't something people actually do much these days. It gives a slightly surreal effect without looking fake.
posted by w0mbat at 11:14 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Amended to: It's not like I can afford to buy a B&W digital camera.
This can be DIY'd from a camera you own, if you have a steady hand and courage. Or you can pay a small outfit a few hundred to do so...if you really want to.
posted by Strudel at 1:24 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This can be DIY'd from a camera you own, if you have a steady hand and courage. Or you can pay a small outfit a few hundred to do so...if you really want to.
posted by Strudel at 1:24 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This can be DIY'd from a camera you own, if you have a steady hand and courage.
I just looked up some DIY instructions on the B&W conversion and you are not kidding about the courage part.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:13 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I just looked up some DIY instructions on the B&W conversion and you are not kidding about the courage part.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:13 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
jason_steakums: "I just looked up some DIY instructions on the B&W conversion and you are not kidding about the courage part."
Holy Hell. I'll just stick with the Lightroom presets, thanks.
posted by octothorpe at 2:57 PM on October 5, 2015
Holy Hell. I'll just stick with the Lightroom presets, thanks.
posted by octothorpe at 2:57 PM on October 5, 2015
If you've got a digital camera, the pictures/video are always going to start out as color
So, the b&w conversion is Ansel-lary?
posted by Chitownfats at 3:40 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
So, the b&w conversion is Ansel-lary?
posted by Chitownfats at 3:40 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I did a whole thing about this to try and explain some of the Photoshop modes and demonstrate how to use them for a photo website.
posted by pjern at 3:51 PM on October 5, 2015
posted by pjern at 3:51 PM on October 5, 2015
w0mbat I was always told that to desaturate a portrait of a human subject, you nearly always wanted to take the red channel and throw the others away. This is because the blood in our skin (apparently even the darkest skin) provides the greatest texture and variability.
I'd imagine you'd want the green channel if you were filming most plant life.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:09 PM on October 5, 2015
I'd imagine you'd want the green channel if you were filming most plant life.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:09 PM on October 5, 2015
Oh, and my canon ixus point-and-shoots have always had a B&W mode, which I loved. You could actually see the results as you shot! Not only were you not guessing at focal length, but also at rough desaturation effect.
Of course exposure was always something you worked out after the shutter closed again. But hey, digital!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:11 PM on October 5, 2015
Of course exposure was always something you worked out after the shutter closed again. But hey, digital!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:11 PM on October 5, 2015
Back in olden times, I had easy access to a darkroom and shot black and white photography all the time. I rolled my own film (Kodak T-Max 400) in my bedroom, shot everything with a Nikon FM2 (no batteries required!), developed it in my bathroom, and made prints in said darkroom.
And the key to getting good B&W negatives (which were actually purple) was shooting with a red filter. The red filter provided so much of the contrast that accounts for the "signature" of good B&W prints, and the light filtering happened the moment the shutter snapped.
Maybe someone makes an app that simulates this "seeing the world in red" aspect of traditional B&W photography (which would be cool), but yeah, there was a lot more going on than just sucking the color out of the image.
posted by subliminable at 5:13 PM on October 5, 2015
And the key to getting good B&W negatives (which were actually purple) was shooting with a red filter. The red filter provided so much of the contrast that accounts for the "signature" of good B&W prints, and the light filtering happened the moment the shutter snapped.
Maybe someone makes an app that simulates this "seeing the world in red" aspect of traditional B&W photography (which would be cool), but yeah, there was a lot more going on than just sucking the color out of the image.
posted by subliminable at 5:13 PM on October 5, 2015
So, the b&w conversion is Ansel-lary?
I just wanted to take a quiet moment to simultaneously scowl at and applaud this.
posted by cortex at 6:16 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I just wanted to take a quiet moment to simultaneously scowl at and applaud this.
posted by cortex at 6:16 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
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