Why B&W should be your go-to profile
Canon EOS R7, shot with a B&W profile I created myself - Harlech Beach, Wales.
“I’m just going to edit the RAWs anyway, why wouldn’t I use the ‘Standard’ profile for shooting?”
This has been my reasoning for pretty much my entire photography career. I’m going to edit the RAW files, and I don’t know if I really want it to be black and white or colour until I get it home anyway, so why wouldn’t I preview all my shots in colour? That is, until recently… You see, over the last 6 months or so, I’ve come to really appreciate previewing a significant portion of my shots in Black and White, and in this blog I’ll explain why…
LUMIX G9ii, using the inbuilt Leica B&W profile - Offa’s Dyke, Mid Wales
The Cons
There are some obvious drawbacks to using a B&W colour profile when previewing your shots on your camera’s screen/viewfinder.
Firstly, your histogram is affected. When you’re trying to correctly expose a photo, the histogram can be really useful in checking if you’re clipping anything. But, on most camera models, the histogram is showing what the jpeg will be when taking a photo. This means that if a particular colour (eg a blue sky) is clipping, it might not be as easy to see as if you were using a colour profile.
Secondly (and obviously), if you’re trying to compose your image for say, complementary colours or colour contrast, you would have to do this by eye rather than on your camera. This can be a serious handicap because being able to see exactly how your RAW is likely to look can be vital in this sort of situation.
In scenarios like these, I would absolutely recommend using a colour profile to shoot your images. However, in most situations these days, I actually strive to use a B&W profile. Here’s why…
LUMIX G9ii, using the inbuilt Leica B&W profile - Altringham Hall, Shrewsbury, England.
The Pros
Mainly, it helps to visually simplify what I want my image to be. The longer I’ve been a photographer, the more I am trying to simplify my pictures. Specifically, it’s composition I want to nail. Distractions are detrimental to composition, and distractions can be easily missed when there’s a lot happening in your photo. In B&W, however, distractions are much easier to spot, because your image is stripped down to the bare minimum. It really does become about nailing your composition. Take the below image for example:
LUMIX G9ii, using the inbuilt Leica B&W profile. I shot this in B&W initially, but edited the RAW to be a colour photo - Altringham Hall, Shrewsbury, England.
This image was actually shot with a B&W profile, generating a B&W jpeg. However, I edited the RAW to create the above image in colour, mainly because the colour of the building was so interesting. Shooting in B&W, however, meant I could easily centralise my subject with the entrance to the hall, whilst making sure all the vertical lines in this shot were symmetrical. The light was important here too. Notice how the light on the floor ends at the bottom of the photo, rather than being cut off. When I was previewing this shot, and timing was critical because the subject was moving, making sure the light wasn’t ‘cut off’ at the bottom was much more noticeable in B&W:
So, next time you’re out shooting, try switching to a B&W profile, and set your camera to save a jpeg and a RAW. You really won’t regret it.
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