Black and White Photography - Leica Akademie Webinar

[@kangzau1006]

Who knew that you have to "get geeky with color" in order to understand B&W photography. Much thanks for this seminar. Gave me a deeper understanding amidst all this modern day tech bombardment. Some new ideas are germinating from this.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Great to hear!

[@jbliborio]

So glad I´ve found this page and this lecture. I photograph both digital and film black and white and has been a long and pleasant journey and it´s always good to hear a qualified discussion about the very basis about this style I love much. Thank you!

[@ebreckpo6563]

Hello Nick, congratulations on this excellent webinar regarding B&W conversion, from a theoretical standpoint (you have to know what you are doing) and the examples through Lightroom, ACR. I think this is an excellent starting point for the novice and even more advanced photographers around. Greetings from Europe.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Thanks for the kind words.

[@ricktackett8099]

Hands down the best color to B&W conversion tutorial I've seen yet! Cheers Nick.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you think so!

[@srinivasankrishnamurthi8597]

excellent presentation and very informative. thank you

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad it was helpful!

[@muellerpics]

Great explanation Nick, not everyone is a professional, and you are showing your very deep level of knowledge in explaining this in a very simple fashion!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Thanks Christian.

[@theredant88]

Luv your series with Leica Akademie, excellent education content & pace for beginners and for long time photo enthusiast even professionals. FYI Michael Kenna is Seattle,USA based photographer/artist. Amazing landscapes he does - Kenna's Hokkaido,series is simply "zen" .

[@marc6652]

It's a very rewarding and humbling video... Thanks a lot Nick. B&W is sometimes changing stone in gold. But in my experience, most photographers think that a poor image becomes suddenly "art" just with taking colors off. That's reckoning without the indispensable talent. At the end, I think that some artists see in color (A. Meyerson...) and others in B&W (S. Salgado...). I'm not an artist by any mean, but I'm in the first category I'm afraid...

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Thanks for sharing!

[@kieulannguyen1193]

Thank you so much for this wonderful video. Really appreciated what you have done for this channel.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad it was helpful!

[@imtiazindia]

Absolutely brilliant webinar. Learn so much again on black and white photography. Thank you so much .

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you found it useful.

[@rangerandbronco]

I've heard Platon speak before. Really amazing photographer. Also the documentary on him was great.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Absolutely; his work has a very distinct look, but then it is mostly on film.

[@cwruefenacht]

Learned tons. I was about to ask you whether the monochrome Q2 was worth it given all that you demonstrated in LIghtroom. But you answered it at the end: color conversion good but not equal to monochrome (stick with my Sony A7R3 and convert or pony up the dollars for the Q2?) I'm a hobbyist photographer, grew up on Pan and TriX in my Nikkormat and trusty 50 and 135 lenses; 4 hours away from Yosemite. Q2 or M10? Please don't tell me both :). Thanks again for brilliant presentation.

[@jaredzzz]

Incredible video. Very informative. Thank you so much!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad it was helpful!

[@romanszechter9683]

Your photographs great. Thank you for including them. Enjoy all your Webinars.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you like them!

[@MrJueKa]

Thanks a lot for this superb content. I`ve started with my own B&W photography in 1979 and I remained loyal to it until today, that`s why I`m glad to see webinars like this in 2020. If money wouldn`t matter a Leica M Monochrom would be my first choice and all I ever need plus a 24 mm and a 75 mm lens and a single speedlite with a small light modifier.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi Jurgen. Yes the Monochrom is in a class of its own, for sure.

[@marcob8084]

Excellent and very instructive! Just bought an SL and can't wait to use it. Had a fantastic time earlier with an M8!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Have fun!

[@TheKimNeeper]

Wow, I learned a lot from this video, it's actually quite easy to make very cool looking BW photos with this information. Thank you!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

You're very welcome!

[@sanfordlavine1760]

This was a wonderful webinar Nick. I too love B&W. I particularly like the composition of the lesson. Examples, a bit of tech, and then the process. Simply brilliant. I wish we could steal you to teach us in the US😎📷📷

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@bennypranata5719]

Thank you for the comprehensive video. excellent. I just got Leica MP 0.58 and would like to learn this film camera.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad it was helpful!

[@jpdj2715]

One thing to look at in post would be the black point and white point. As you have - maybe - 5 usable f-stops dynamic range on paper (under a rather bright light), you can help your processing by defining the black point higher than digital zero and the white point lower than digital maximum. This means you can now define gradation and contrast to a narrower range more easily. Basically you define "this is black and I do not want details in areas darker than this" and vice versa for white. It can help enhance the "drama" in your prints. (In C1 you can move the black point and white point in the histogram - very transparent - in LR you have to go to the gradation curve.) I would hope that LR re-maps digital values anew against the new black and white points, when you move them, so as to have maximum gradation control ...

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi JP, yes setting the black and white points is critical in good print making. This is something I cover in my print making courses. No time in the webinar to delve so deep! BTW, you can do the same in LR using the Black and White sliders and holding down the Opt/Alt key - then you get a really good display of where your limits are.

[@jpdj2715]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia - thank you - great tip.

[@haraldschreiber]

Thank you for sharing this! Very interesting and useful.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

My pleasure!

[@edn.3442]

You got some great pictures there!

[@pmgalves1977]

Amazing how much I learn on these...

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad to hear it!

[@jeremieburlen8090]

Hello, I'm sorry but at 11:27 it's Marc RIBOUD and this one is called Jeune Fille à la Fleur. Maybe I didn't understand quite well with your accent. I'm french. Great Webinar bt the way, thank you. Jeremie

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

You are quite correct, in fact someone else picked that up - see an earlier comment. This image is occasionally mis-attributed on some Google searches and I didn't double-check.

[@jeremieburlen8090]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia Oups ! Sorry, I haven't seen it... Cheers

[@seanfromwashington4524]

Please offer a 4K or 6K version in the future

[@theladubfovi909]

I believe Kenna’s work is not digital at all, and that he only works in film. Loving this talk, btw. 😎🤜🏽🤛🏽

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Yes, like Platon.

[@robotweizenkeim1556]

The "when was it shot" test at about 7:45 with a picture showing a filmset seems a bit unfair to the viewer, doesn't it? But what does the picture tell or prove about b+w? A color film picture taken or developed with old technique would give the same "test" result.

[@hizhaus]

Love B/W! One quick suggestion is to not use the zooming effect for the presentation reel. It takes up a lot of bandwidth on the video and ends up being very choppy.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Yes indeed. This was an early Zoom-based live webinar recording, before we found out the hard way that playing videos across Zoom was problematic. The slideshow is in fact a video and yes, it's pretty choppy (so is the sound).

[@michaellutherdavies]

Hi Nick I remember showing my youngest son around forty years ago some of my B&W shots he was about three years old and he said to me was everything around us in the olden days without colour 😂🤣😂😅🤣 Kind regards Michael

[@kmcsmart]

Fabulous video. Thanks.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@ianpicken6181]

great tracking and easy to follow - well done

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you liked it!

[@Traveljournalist]

I love your videos. your ideas and advices are very smart !

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you like them!

[@benedictus111]

Always enjoy your video. Thanks. I want to ask you why shooting with Leica M10M with Noctilus tends to be over exposed. Kindly advise the best setting for daylight photo shooting. Thanks.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi Benedictus111. Not sure why that should happen, except if the shutter speed will not go high enough for a correct exposure if you are shooting at f0.95. The M10M has a max shutter speed of 1/4000 and in full sunlight at f0.95 you would need 1/8000 or more at ISO100. Sometimes you need a 2-4 stop neutral density filter to get a correct exposure using the Noctilux in full sunlight, or use a camera with an electronic shutter like the SL2 which has a higher maximum shutter speed.

[@benedictus111]

Leica Camera Australia thank you for your reply. Appreciate it. Will keep trying.

[@filmic1]

Thank you so much! Great class!!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

You're so welcome!

[@jasongold6751]

Photo was Marc Riboud (Magnum) not George Rodger of flower in gun..we all sometimes have a blank!

[@nohaybandaninguna]

This was brilliant, so helpful! I wish I lived in Australia :)

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@deantaylor1512]

Why?...

[@sml_photo]

Watched this again! Really...a VERY good presentation. I've also read the comments below, too. Just a follow up question-- Would one be able to edit the same image of the gentleman from Myanmar to get a similar tonal effect somehow if it was photographed with a Monochrome? I'm assuming all one could use in that case would be non-global brightness and darkness adjustments (if anything). Thanks again for providing this info about b&w!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi SM. You are correct, only tonal adjustments (dodging and burning, plus exposure, contrast, etc) can be made to M-Monochrom images. Any colour/greyscale relationships can only be controlled by coloured filters on the lens.

[@mouse3355]

Is there will be any difference using Apochromatically corrected lens on monochrome only sensor-camera? e.g., more distinctive separation between objects?

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

I have not tested this directly, but I would say yes. APO-corrected lenses have inherently crisper micro-contrast and the lack of bayer-interpolation on the monochrom cameras would tend to compliment this. I have seen results from the M10 Monochrom with the APO-50mm and they were sensational.

[@mouse3355]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia Sounds amazing! Thank you.

[@mouse3355]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia Oh, and by the way, why people tend to use so called "low-contrast lenses" when shooting with B/W "film"? Is there any difference to B/W film photography when paired with "excellent-contrast lenses" and "low-contrast lenses"? Just a silly question : )

[@absonus]

Would that be Manchester uk ? Not many mountains around there :) Another informative video.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Yes, it is! Close anyway, Cheshire.

[@absonus]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia Ah ... Didsbury myself but now iving out on the coast Blackpool .

[@tanke1818]

Thank you for sharing your expertise

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Wolfloid]

Isn‘t the one you attributed to George Rodger actually a Marc Riboud image?

[@Wolfloid]

That is the woman with the flower in front of the soldiers.

[@danielmalter3373]

People weren't fooled so much by the movie still being taken by a Leica M3 or by being shot on Tri-X or by the photographer being an old school (war) photographer inasmuch as they were fooled by a movieset created to look like it was 1966, which is the time the movie is set to play in. The point being, the latter has nothing to do with the former, and everyone who guessed Vietnam war era is fundamentally correct.

[@gerardporter4049]

Bonjour , ERROR AT 11.27 , IL S'AGIT D'UNE PHOTO DE MARC RIBOUD MAGNUM ET NON DE GEORGE RODGER . "JEUNE FILLE A LA ROSE" JANE ROSE KASMIR 21 OCTOBRE 1967 WASHINGTON D.C.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Bonjour Gerard. Vous avez raison, mon erreur. Merci pour la correction. J'ai vu cette image attribuée à Rodger dans d'autres endroits, mais maintenant je regarde à nouveau, oui, Riboud est le photographe.

[@paulmurphypudsey3304]

Love you work

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Thank you so much 😀

[@AndyNormanPhotography]

The "Michael Kenna" discussed at 14.06 isn't. It's a picture called "Zebrato" by a photographer called Michael Levin. Levin might be considered a follower of Kenna but his style is somewhat different. Kenna's typical 'jetty shot' is more realistic and lower contrast than this. Also note that Kenna's work (which I recommend you look out) does not, I understand, use ND filters but involves a lot of night and other low light work.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi Andy. Well that's a bit embarrassing, good catch. It was miss-attributed on a website I visited whilst looking for an example, and there are other not totally dissimilar jetty images by Mr Kenna. I stand corrected. You may have noticed I refer to an alleged Lewis Hine photo (Empire State Building workers) which is commonly listed as being his but in fact may not be. But with Mr Kenna's work it should have been harder to mistake - I should have referred to his books, not relied on the internet!

[@vitto888]

Great webinar: thank you Nick. You mentioned a few times that the monochrome has no colour information but better tonality capture, but having to choose is the monochrome still a superior tool for capturing B&W images? Or being able to work on the different colours adds greater flexibility and therefore better output ?

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

The M-Monochrom is definitely better in terms of sheer sharpness, low light performance and a certain subtlety of tone which is very 'film-like'. However, the only way to control the different colours' greyscale tonality is to use lens filters - green, red, blue etc. Monochrom - better quality and tonality. M10P - more control.

[@jpdj2715]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia - relevant and valid answer. Just started your video and browsing through the comments, I read this. The very nerdy addition would be that a sensor is a monochrome and analogue device that is "read" by the camera's processor/chips around it and that data is processed a lot to get an extremely well cooked color raw file. Depending on the age of the sensor tech, the analog to digital conversion is done outside the sensor. Newer sensors have onboard AD conversion. To get a color raw file, the sensor has a filter overlay that presents 50 % of the PVC (photovoltaic cells) - AKA photosites - with a green filter, 25% with a red and 25% with a blue filter in the Bayer arrangement, generally. So, a sensor has no "pixels" as (color) pixels have RGB values and the color sensor has monochrome color values. So we have a problem and an issue: how do we get "RGB" pixels in a raw file and we lost light through the filter layer. The 14 bits extracted from each analogue PVC much be guesstimated so each G reading gets a G and B value attributed, the R ones a G and B and the B ones an R and G. This is where we loose quality from the 14 bits and introduce noise and become vulnerable to de-mosaicking working too bad or too good. Even when we may claim "detail resolution" at the amount of PVC in the sensor, that is a marketing lie, even when we may claim 14 bits depth, that is a marketing lie - at the level of the well-cooked raw file. This is why DxOmark ends up with 25.3 bits color depth (at the raw file level) from a 14 bit per channel camera (at the sensor level). 25.3 is only slightly better than the 24 bits RGB you get from 8 bits per channel. Which is why today's JPEG is so surprisingly good ... and our 8-bit monitors too. This is why, talking about "resolution" I always add "detail" or "gradation" and when talking about "gradation resolution" I have to add dynamic range. 14 bits detail resolution at 10 f-stops dynamic range can give me better gradation than 14 bits at 15 f-stops dynamic range. A "Monochrome" does not have all the hassle of the color cooking. No filter layer that takes away light. No de-Bayerisation and de-mosaicking. Just plain PVC readout. There is one thing that may be addressed in the software/firmware to generate the raw file: sharpening. There may be some anti-aliasing algorithms that tweak PVC readouts in relation with the detail resolution. I would hope this is zero, by the way, and want to address it in post when I need to scale up (upsample) monochrome pixels to the actual print resolution. How this is done, by which software, makes a big difference. The dominant approach is to leave it to Lightroom or Photoshop and the printer driver and printer. That may not give the best result. One thing the Leica may still have on top of the sensor: a Fresnel-lens like neutral glass (where rings are broken up in dotted lenses) layer to address the problems that sensors have with light falling on them at sharper than 90 degrees angles (and in the process helping anti-aliasing by making details a bit fuzzy). Conventional (i.e. Gaussian) lens designs get nearer the sensor with decreasing focal length and towards sensor/frame/image edges this makes the angle of incidence sharper and sharper, so that glass layer can provide backward compatibility with - excellent - old lens designs (but may not work well with a 300mm on a Visoflex mirror box). So much is left out compared to the color model and so much does not have to be done in runtime (before, during and after you press the shutter button) that we should expect exponentially better results. Now continue from 1 min 29 sec.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi JP. You are very well informed and I agree about sharpening. Regarding your last paragraphs, if you are asking if there is a fresnel on top of the sensor then the answer is no. Each photosite has a microlens which achieves much the same result by 'gathering in' light that is impinging at a severe angle i.e wide lenses at the corners.

[@jpdj2715]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia - my assumption is that each microscopic lens on a PVC is at an angle to the optical axis and this angle varies away from that axis. In that sense it compares with a Fresnel lens where the things are cut up in these microscopic lenses.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

JP. it’s like a little dome. I think there are some diagrams on the Leica website. A fresnel or similar would not work because different lenses have different projection angles behind the lens. The tech is proprietary and custom-made but similar to this: www.eenewsanalog.com/news/high-dynamic-range-cmos-image-sensor-deliver-24mpixels-across-36x24mm-area/page/0/1

[@JayGrapherTh]

great video and this is the thing. why would someone want to get a monochrome camera when having the RGB to be able to edit the tones much more flexibility? or one would/should realize that when one gets a monochrome camera they are buying it to get the "true" black and white experience and like film and understand the limitation in the post processing process to gain something else. just the pros and cons and not that one is better than the other?

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi Jay. The Monochrom has no Bayer filter so you get a true greyscale rendering with no interpolation. This makes the camera about 2 stops better in terms of noise, and gives a crispness to edges that is quite visible. In B+W film days this would be termed 'accutance'. The post-processing flexibility offered by colour captures is offset by the increase in image quality and that certain "je ne sais pas' that committing to B+W gives you. You really need to see the results from the Monchrom - then you will see what it's all about! It's a unique camera.

[@sml_photo]

Very useful resource. Thanks.

[@ChristineWilsonPhotography]

Great webinar full of info

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@damianc80]

Will they ever make a black and white SL camera??

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Anything is possible - after all the M-Monochrom is hugely popular. But, as you know, Leica never comment on future releases so you will have to wait and see!

[@nickfanzo]

Awesome video

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@Smilingmoon039]

Can you shoot raw and monochrome jpegs with the q2 as well??

[@ebreckpo6563]

The Q2 has the same menu system as the SL2 (if you have firmware 2.0 on the Q2). It is possible with most camera's. You can set DNG+JPG and have a DNG(raw file) with all the colour information and the JPG is how the camera internals is interpreting B&W. If you are using Lightroom I would advise you go into Settings -> General check Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos. This makes the jpg pictures visible in your Lightroom catalogue. When you import your pictures you will see the colour DNG with a B&W jpg. I used this technique a lot with my M8 & M9 as I found the in camera B&W conversion in these camera's excellent (for my taste). It is also a great starting point for looking what works best for the image colour or B&W.

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Exactly. Well put.

[@kevinsolie2208]

Great session

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Thanks Kevin. Glad you enjoyed it.

[@malcolmlawrence3169]

Awesome. Thank you

[@kihu14]

holy shit that is some excellent shot!

[@dominiquecollard9068]

How about shooting film for BW and Digital for colour. !

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi Dominique. Sure why not? Film still has a certain 'organic' quality that cannot be fully emulated by a digital sensor.

[@sepperl8200]

Great. Thanks!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

You're welcome!

[@dradmin792]

Thank you a lot!

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

You're welcome!

[@CARLA19822]

Excellent

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@sharonleibel]

Where can I register to these great webinars?

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Hi Sharon. Go to : www.leica-akademie.com.au. You will see a sign up form for a newsletter. We announce all our webinars there.

[@sharonleibel]

@@LeicaCameraAustralia Thank you! Will do.

[@Smilingmoon039]

Where did you get those picture frames from??

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Secret!. No, they are a Photoshop mock-up used as a background. So I can change the images easily.

[@Smilingmoon039]

Leica Camera Australia ahhhh you are truly a marvel of geniuses 🤯 well done!!!

[@carlosoruna7174]

you can develop film and obtain different contrasts . Microdol and d76 where 2 different animals. Umm so color filters dont work on ccd cameras, damm

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Colour filters do work on monochrome CCD sensors such as in the original Leica M-Monochrom. CMOS or CCD makes no difference. For colour sensors, there is no benefit to using coloured filters as you can achieve the exact same result in post.

[@thomasradovnikovic6518]

All good but I’d rather use simpler adjustments as on camera or iPad and spend more of my time taking pictures in the field!

[@Notmy00000]

From NL 🇳🇱 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@maxsilberztein]

thank you for the excellent course. If the human brain is more sensitive to green (59%) than blue (11%), doesn't it mean that pure light-intensity sensitive cameras such as the Q2 monochrome produce wrong pictures, with blue skies 6-time too light and green grass much too dark, with muddy photos because objects with different colors but same brightness appear to be in the same gray? If that is so, the best way to make black&white photos is to get a color camera, not a monochrome one...

[@toothzombie]

I can hear you okay 👍

[@gurugamer8632]

Can you do a Leica M10-R give away ?

[@suzannejoyk]

I guessed green 😂

[@xfloodcasual8124]

All of these same concepts were already dealt with by engineers at Kodak, Fuji and Illford in the 20th century when subjectively designing their B&W film stocks. (And they did it entirely in the analog/chemical domain). To this day, the tone from those stocks is still preferable or at least much better starting point artistically. Somehow we go in circles.

[@ron5935]

So Sergei invented Technicolor sort of

[@LeicaCameraAustralia]

Indeed, sort of! Not commonly known.

[@Wolfloid]

Salgado

[@malcolmlawrence3169]

Eugene Smith , sorry Dorothea Lange

[@pw3459]

all ok

[@jackmiller1804]

Ok

[@Cristo_Mario]

the smug on the wall is spoiling everything.

[@andreasrochow5170]

Too blurry and too obamaish! It's a shame!

[@geoffreybairsto8061]

Very false looking

[@klartext2225]

Sorry, murky pic quality here. Won't watch.