Optic 2016: Black and White Mastery with John Paul Caponigro

[@RonDonson]

A fine approach and appreciation for B&W in the digital age.

[@odisseyproducciones222]

Great talk as always! Just one thing @b&h photo video, and it is said with all the care and best intentions.Back in the day with your earlier videos, I thought it was a matter of being a new thing, these videos. But this one is not so old and still, when the speaker is showing crucial information on his slides, your frame is focused on the speaker instead of switching to the screen shot, as you do on other frames, which does not allow us, viewers, to see important information that is being talked about. I don't know if it is a matter of post or on set coordination, but it would be much appreciated if you could care about this detail which I presume is valuable for all of us, your viewers. Thanks!

[@sara505sings]

Exactly! It's exasperating. Don't want to see backs of heads and the presenter, we want to see the slide that the presenter is discussing. I realize this video was shot a few years ago but this is an ongoing problem with these B&h presentations. A nice big screen but we can't see what he's doing.

[@riaanleroux7275]

Very informative and inspiring, Thank you so much John Paul!!!!

[@TheHudsonValleyWanderer]

I wish i could pick this guys brain for a year!

[@krishnansrinivasan830]

Nice session. This hall and video edits are much better to watch ! Thank you :)

[@royston6451]

I was taught at Art School that if you put all the Colors of the Rainbow together, you get White.! If you Take Out All the Colours Out of White.! You get Black, so Black is Not a Colour, because it is Devoid of All Colours.! There was a Still a Lot of Snobbery about Black & White in Photography Clubs I used to go too.! One Photography Club was Purely for Black & White Photography Only.!

[@romiemiller2485]

A bit more audio volume is needed.

[@ChristineWilsonPhotography]

With black and white display , you are at the mercy of other people's monitors unfortunately there's no control over how they will be viewed.

[@chromebright1]

difficult to follow as presenter assumes too much

[@Arieeeee]

So in summery, move the color sliders around until you get the black and white photo you like. Let's not act like we're scientists here.

[@markgrzan9074]

This could have been a nice presentation in not for the fact we could not see what he was talking about. Moving sliders? Well, there were no sliders to see. The screen was focused on the image and did not show all of the adjustment layers and sliders he was using - - Good Job technical staff at BH !!!!!!

[@christopherward5065]

Ultrasonic is not an electromagnetic radiation as far as I am aware. It’s a mechanical vibration. It is not even the same type of wave it needs a medium such as a solid or a fluid to transmit it and doesn’t create electrical or magnetic fields. You have put it on a scale that is continuous with the electromagnetic spectrum which isn’t related to it. Think about Newton demonstrating that refraction allows white light to reveal its range of energies as a spectrum of colours, whilst a specific colour cannot be further refracted into a series of colours. So the continuum taking us from white light to almost no light is actually all the light energy frequencies being equally intensely received by the observer’s eye in the same proportions but at ever decreasing intensities. Meanwhile black is an absence of all energy from the visible spectrum at the observers eye. In black and white photography, the medium is sensitive to intensity over the range of the visible spectrum it records but it can’t reproduce and represent the differences in frequencies it receives So two different colours can produce the same grey value if they have the same intensity. We then could differentiate between the two colours by applying colour filters. The filter will transmit its own colour onto the medium at a higher intensity than it transmits other colours. E.g. a red filter transmits red best and absorbs other colours. It absorbs the blue from the sky making the sky darker, it transmits the red from skin tones, making skin paler. This is how the Bayer filter matrix on a digital sensor array is used to synthesise a colour image from identical colour-blind photosites on a sensor. Colour in black and white photography is not really a phenomenon and we are left with contrast, acutance, tonality and luminosity. We are simplifying the visual grammar of an image by removing the representation of colour. We get to think differently about how we represent the subject of our photograph and we light and compose to the strengths of the medium.

[@RonK]

Too bad the relevant technique stuff in Photoshop is NOT shown or better said "hidden"... bummer.

[@stuartwalker121]

you have to subscribe for that...

[@agrnbrg]

Have you updated this since 2016?

[@ai.experiments]

Bit loose with the science based stuff but useful none the less

[@PDSeverus]

All I want to know is how he got that greyscale/colour band side by side to the image .Thanks

[@christopherward5065]

A really enjoyable exploration!

[@federicogarciamaroto1571]

What a shame!!! Such a nice Talk completely destroyed by tje recording.

[@ladduro]

Why in the hell arent you showing his screen when he is working in Photoshop editing images. Geez, that is stupid. I dont want to see the room at that point

[@danzaar5161]

I like hearing this man speak. Very good video.

[@DiNozzo431]

This made me realize that I know nothing - thank you!

[@Foxglove963]

He got that wrong. White is not a color, but it contains all colors.

[@peterhirzel]

Learned a lot, thx John Paul!

[@marclabro]

very interesting presentation. I didn't understand the printing part. I have a SCP-600 and use ilford semi gloss or semi pearl. do you mean that for cyanotype... you disable color managemet in printer and set lightroom manages colors but for true black and white, if we want deep BW, you specify that printer manages color on both side, printer and lightroom ? so in that case, we specify ilford in printer but nothing in lightroom.

[@BandH]

Please e-mail us: [e-mail] >Mark

[@mvrz6]

Cocky... but interesting.

[@ornino54]

shut film black and white ..

[@drezdogge]

informative, concise and thoughtful, three thumbs up

[@jortega380]

Great presentation. Thank you

[@ninojonas9739]

what a master, thanks for this video

[@mirraalwin]

love your tutorial...

[@cathymcdougall9878]

Poor quality video, totally misses most of the screen presentation, from a distance is not helpful.

[@willbaren]

This is so good I watch it over and over again. Thanks so much.

[@DynastyUK]

Did you stop watching it yet? ;)

[@dunzelkirk3375]

What? This guy says "understand that black and white are colors." WRONG. This guy doesn't understand color theory. Black is not a color; a black object absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes. Black is the total absence of color. White is the blending of all colors, and is therefore a color. He should also make it more clear that he's talking about PRINTS - and not digital photography when he speaks of color hue and saturation making a difference. Hue and Saturation mean nothing in digital photography, as it works in the RGB color space and not LAB.

[@Leicashootr]

Dunzel Kirk you are the one who clearly not understand what JP are talking about!!!!