Monochrome Monday: Simultaneous Monochrome & Color Capture

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

“There is a delicate ridge one must ride between fear and reason on a motorcycle—lean too far in either direction and there will be consequences.”—Lily Brooks-Dalton

There is much more to black and white photography than simply an absence of color. Maybe we wouldn’t feel this way if the first photographs had been made in full color but that didn’t happen and, like many photographers of my generation, I grew up admiring the works of W. Eugene Smith and other photojournalists who  photographed people at work, play, or just being themselves in glorious black and white.

One of the reasons purists often refer to black and white images as “monochrome” is that it’s a much more precise term that also covers photographs made in sepia and other tones. Most contemporary DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have built-in monochrome capture mode with some offering what they call “scene modes.” Canon calls these modes Picture Styles including one—Nostalgia— that enhances gray tones while making the rest of the colors less vibrant and producing a hand-colored look. You can see an example in a previous post about Picture Styles here.

How I Made this Photograph: The original color photograph was made at the first of only two motorcycle shows* that I ever attended. The image was captured with a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N with an EF 22-55mm f/4-5.6 USM lens (at 55mm) and an exposure of 1/25 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 800.

Color to Monochrome

The reality is that you can always shoot in color and make these kinds of monochromatic conversions after the fact using Adobe Photoshop or your favorite digital imaging software. This is a topic I’ve written about all the time—as recently as yesterday!—when talking about using software tools and methods to create monochrome images from original color files.

Shooting directly in black & white has some advantages in the way it impacts how you see while you are actually capturing the image and providing instant feedback will help focus your vision. For portraits, it also lets you share that vision with the subject. I’m not afraid of losing the original color image because I capture color and monochrome image files at the same time.

In addition to monochrome capture, most DSLRs or mirrorless camera have the ability to simultaneously capture RAW+JPEG files. (For my own journey to shooting  RAW and then shooting RAW+JPEG, check out this post when you have time.) If you set your camera for RAW+JPEG capture then select the monochrome effect you want, you’ll end up with two files: One in color (RAW) and the other in black and white (JPEG.)

Many digital DSLRs and mirrorless cameras that have dual memory card slots let you capture RAW files on one memory card and JPEG image files on the other. That means you can put all your color RAW files on one card and monochromes on the other. Give it a try.

I like to shoot RAW+JPEG images not just when making portraits—such as photographing classic motorcycles—because the LCD provides a preview of what the black and white image will look like—handy for showing portrait subjects during a session too—while the color RAW files can be used to produce the finished image. Why convert the file later? A black and white image file only gives 256 grey tones to work with, while the color file gives 16.7 million possible colors creating a more subtle black and white or monochrome image. My post Monochrome is Not Just Black and White has some more thoughts about this subject.

If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat me to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), please click here. And if you do, thanks so much.

My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects is available from Amazon and (I think, anyway) is a fun read. There’s even a chapter on infrared photography. It’s available for $16.16 but bargain shoppers can pick up used copies starting for less than three bucks. No Kindle version is available at this time.