How to take a satisfactory black and white photo source with a digital camera;

Problems brought by the development of equipment Nowadays, digital cameras are developing rapidly, which can replace almost all the functions of film cameras in the past, including the function of taking black and white photos directly. This brings a question: Do you take black-and-white photos directly with a digital camera, or do you take color photos and convert them into black-and-white photos with software? We can't unilaterally say which method is the best, because these two forms do have their own advantages and disadvantages. Art and technology can't have both. First of all, compared with color images, black-and-white images only use three tones of black, white and gray to represent the subject. Therefore, the quality control of black and white images is particularly important. To shoot high-quality black-and-white images, it is necessary to have excellent control over the lines, shapes, light and shadow of the scenery. This is a realm that can only be achieved through long-term observation and personal experience, and it requires a lot of photographers. Therefore, for those cinematographers who like to take black and white photos directly with digital cameras, perhaps many people have experienced the era of film cameras and have a deep understanding of traditional black and white images. Film camera and digital camera are just different carriers for them, and they are already familiar with shooting black and white images. However, there is a disadvantage in shooting directly with a digital camera. At present, the tolerance of photosensitive elements of digital cameras is far from that of films, especially black and white films. The principle of taking black-and-white photos with a digital camera is to do the second operation in the machine and directly remove the color on the basis of color photos. After removing the color, only three colors remain in the image. In this conversion process, similar colors may be converted into black or gray, and there is also such a problem between white and gray, so that the whole image will lose many levels and details, which is uncontrollable. This is the most fatal defect of taking black-and-white photos directly with digital cameras at present. The maturity of fast food black-and-white film has been directly shot with digital camera. Now let's talk about the method that many people are using, which is to turn the color photos into black and white later. Movie friends who adopt this method may have different starting points, and some people may be limited to the function of the camera; Some people may think it is more important to take color photos first, and there is more room for post-processing; Some people may be because the finished color film can't be used and can only be converted into black and white; Others simply want to get more black and white photos with more levels and details, and control the whole conversion process by themselves. Whatever the reason, it is better to use software to convert color photos into black-and-white photos than to take black-and-white photos directly with a camera. There are many ways to convert color photos into black and white photos with software. Some people mistakenly think that converting black-and-white photos with software will look fake, which is actually a wrong view. As we know, black and white is a color expression of color. In the collocation of red (R), green (G) and blue (B), R+B+G= white and R-B-G= black, so white and black are in the same color gamut quadrant, so it cannot be said to be pseudo-black and white. Among many transformation methods, some transformation results seem to be false, because we can't accurately control them during the operation. Take Photoshop software as an example: 1. Directly select the menu "Image-Adjustment-Decolorization"; 2. The photo is directly converted into grayscale mode, and the step is "image-mode-grayscale"; 3. Reduce the color saturation of the picture to the minimum, so as to get a gray image. The steps are image-adjustment-hue/saturation-and then adjust the saturation to-100. The above three methods are the simplest to operate, but they can't be controlled during the conversion process. The restoration of some colors is different from the real black-and-white film, which makes people feel fake. In fact, there are some menu options in Photoshop that can also be used to convert black-and-white photos, and the method is not complicated, but the effect is very good, such as gradient mapping. Step 1: Open the image in Photoshop, create a copy of the background, set the foreground color to black and the background color to white. Step 2: Image-Adjustment-Gradient Mapping to bring up the Gradient Mapping Settings dialog box. You can check the Jitter option to increase the smoothness of the gradient. When finished, a gradient will be automatically applied to the image according to its gray value, and it will be converted into a black-and-white photo. In addition, there are some modes such as layers and channels, which will not be introduced here. There are some rules to follow when converting black-and-white photos with software later. Not all color photos are suitable for conversion. Here are some principles to follow: 1. A photo with a simple background and a prominent theme. If it is a photo with a complex background, the subject is likely to be connected with the background after being converted into a black-and-white photo, which is difficult to distinguish. 2. Photos with strong light and shadow effects. Photos with strong light and shadow effects can well show the texture and effect of the subject after being converted into black and white photos. 3. Some "overexposed" photos. Note that not all overexposed color photos are suitable, and it is meaningless to convert them into black-and-white photos because of too much overexposure. 4. Photos with more noise in dark light. Some high-sensitivity photos are suitable to be converted into black-and-white photos because of their high noise and strong graininess. 5. Photos with too many variegated colors affect the purity of the picture or subject. For example, some subjects are broken and dirty.