Black Z Eddie wrote:
The only time I've heard of this is just someone setting their camera to B/W but still shoot RAW.  They can see the shadings through their EVF; or through previewing the images.

The problem with shooting in B/W is if the image would be better in color then you've given up that option. If you only shoot .jpg there is no way to add color unless you do it manually color by color and area by area in post.

Wouldn't it be better, abet more work, to view in in b/w and then switch over to color ?  You can see the shades, make your decisions, and then capture it in color.

Vector One Photography wrote:
The problem with shooting in B/W is if the image would be better in color then you've given up that option. If you only shoot .jpg there is no way to add color unless you do it manually color by color and area by area in post.

Wouldn't it be better, abet more work, to view in in b/w and then switch over to color ?  You cn see the shades, make your decisions, and then capture it in color.

The poster said B/W + RAW, which gives you your original color version. I still think that's a waste of time as well.

(edit) I guess it could be used to help develop your eye for B/W.

alantan-fotography wrote:
Hi,
Does any fotogs shoot that way?
I've heard a few fotogs says they shoot in black n white and then convert to color so they can see the different shadings as you get confuse sometime with color. Maybe it makes sense in shooting landscape but what about portraits?
I know that in retouching , you have a black n white so you can dodge and burn properly.
Thanks.

If you want to do things correctly - you should NOT post-process your images in the camera in any way (including b&w conversion) because this will prevent you to expose correctly. The purpose of shooting is correct exposure, focus and composition - not nice colors, nice effect, etc. The later you do in post. You cannot possibly have correct exposure (ETTR) if you apply post effects in camera (unless your camera can show raw histograms and clip warnings which is usually not the case). So normally what you would want is UniWB, not contrast, saturation or sharpening adjustments etc. That is of course if you want to use the full capacity of your camera, not shoot for jpg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K6gCpTgJVg

Giacomo Cirrincioni wrote:
Not exactly but something similar.

When I learned to light it was on film/tv sets, shot mostly on video or with a video village.  The DP who taught me always had one production monitor with the saturation all the way down.  Even though we metered everything, we still would preview the lighting on that monitor.  He always lit for contrast and it was much easier to see in B&W.  If it looked good on the desaturated monitor, it would usually look great in color - obviously we would sometimes make changes to that based on artistic reasons, but that was always the starting point.  It was essentially a zone system approach to lighting that made it easy to eyeball.

The problem with this approach is that you cannot possibly evaluate individual channel exposure when you apply post-processing in camera through which you make all channels the same. On the camera LCD you are looking at JPG, not at raw. Raw is linear, jpg is not. Raw is mosaiced, jpg is not - which means that in jpg you don't really have the actual raw channel values but some approximation calculated by the demosaic algorithm (which you usually don't know nothing about as the camera vendor won't give you the source code of their raw converter). Without being able to see the shape of the actual raw histogram you won't be able tell if your image is clipped, which channel is clipped, if it is underexposed etc. Nobody can evaluate visually the difference between 255 255 255 and 253 253 253 and from 255 255 255 nobody can tell which of the 3 channels is clipped. So if your camera cannot show raw data, the best approximation is to use UniWB and watch histogram shape. Or use Magic Lantern (if you have Canon) - it shows raw histograms and clippings. I've been told that P1 IQ3 100mpx shows raw highlight clippings but I haven't researched into that myself - what I usually get is the final raws from such cameras.

Later, when I started working with colorists (observing really) I saw them do the same thing.  They would desaturate the image when working on value adjustments, then resaturate and isolate hue and saturation for those adjustments.  Then they would tweak the globals. When I started doing more advanced compositing work with CGI I adopted the same approach - creating check layers that isolate Hue, Saturation & Value so that I could adjust each separately.

HSV model is easier for the intellectual brain and to verbalize e.g. if a color is more saturated or not but it has disadvantages because which you may want to stay away from it.

alantan-fotography wrote:
I do shoot in raw + adobe color.

Raw has no color space. You assign a color space during raw conversion.

Yosh Studio wrote:
The poster said B/W + RAW, which gives you your original color version. I still think that's a waste of time as well.

(edit) I guess it could be used to help develop your eye for B/W.

Where did the OP say B/W + RAW ?

Did he edit the post because I just looked and not one word about RAW.

Vector One Photography wrote:
Where did the OP say B/W + RAW ?

Did he edit the post because I just looked and not one word about RAW.

I didnt say OP. I said poster, as in the post you quoted from Eddie Z.