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Anonymous12/30/25, 00:29No.4491118
What's the secret to digital b&w photography?
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Anon12/30/25, 00:31No.4491119
Take a shitty photo with le nostalgia vibes
Bonus points if the subject is slightly out of focus
Convert to b&w, et voila
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Anon12/30/25, 01:34No.4491122
Protect your highlights.
Because you're limited to tones of grey, black and white, you need to find subjects where this is beneficial and not a hindrance.
Soft gradients. Shadows. Chiaroscuro and tenebrism. The contrast between light and dark. Black and white photography works well with architecture because it's serves to define structures and features. With models you have to think about it as if you are working with charcoal and paper. Where do you want highlights to be? What are you focusing on? And what do you want to be hidden.
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Anon12/30/25, 02:20No.4491129
Got to have some white and black, dont make it all grey
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Anon12/30/25, 07:33No.4491171
The secret is that colours are incredibly important because they dictate how much contrast each object gets. Doubly so if using colour filters (you should be) and even MORE so if you're using special film stocks that can be more or less sensitive to certain colours. It's a decietfuly simple concept since at first glance you go "it must be simple there's only black grey and white hue hue", but balancing the contrast in your overall composition, your foreground and background, and your subject are all important and easily fucked up.And then there's black and white snapshits that are simple and throw all that theory out the window because muh nostalgic and muh filmic vibes. They still tend to look "nice" because it's much easier to view a black and white photograph as removed from reality since, well, reality is in colour.There's also the plain fact that removing colour from a photo forces you to focus on the other elements that do or don't make the photograph good. This is why selective-colour chuds are dunked on so hard here: you're forcing an easy way to highlight your subject via software instead of actually putting thought into it.This becomes a bit of a moot point if you scan though because then you can just chuck up some post-processing.
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Anon01/02/26, 14:49No.4491655
I want to get the Ricoh GRIV monochrome when it releases. Until then I shoot my Zf in deep monochrome.
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Anon01/02/26, 15:05No.4491660
insane contrast, you like have nik collection or run opensource with moderate sigmoidal contrast plus contrast-stretch 10%x10% options
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Anon01/02/26, 19:47No.4491696
just make it look good
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Anon01/02/26, 22:28No.4491707
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Anon01/07/26, 07:32No.4492571
I tried the "simulated red filter + boosted saturation" method again. The skies start banding like hell if you push them too hard though. 1/2
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Anon01/07/26, 09:18No.4492582
Black and white is for when the colors of what you're photographing are ugly.
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Anon01/13/26, 10:32No.4493609
>just dodge and burn, bro
brutal
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Anon01/13/26, 19:28No.4493658
colors still matter and how you set up contrast is usually what makes it look good imho
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Anon01/22/26, 14:49No.4494894
CPL filter and Nikon's high contrast B+W mode
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Anon01/23/26, 06:02No.4494962
Im not really into BW photography, but sometimes I try a little and always end up with something boring. Which are my mistakes?
