Shooting in black & white

I see where you guys are going with this, but as a DP, I'm going to light totally differently if it's black and white vs. if it's color. It's two different ways of telling your story. B&W looks best with more contrast and backlight then most would deem acceptable in color. Because you don't have color, the lightness of things now is what gives them meaning.

Therefore, I don't care that I'm settling for how "they" wanted to desaturate my colors. Lightness curves still works, Levels still works, so you can do a good amount of correction. I'd rather get an image on-set I'm happy with and only have to adjust small things in the edit bay then give it a half-effort and try to fix it in post. And If you don't have this attitude, I'd recommend picking it up quickly.

EDIT: One might argue that in this digital age, it's just as important to know your post tools as it is to know your tools on-set, so that post goes a lot smoother. I agree. However, you will make your editor 1000x happier by shooting extra angles, coverage, etc then by shooting in color and saying "Here, make this look good in black and white."
 
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I was referring to the efficiency of compression.

Of course if we were shooting redcode or other form of RAW then there's no point in destructively baking in B&W.

What I mean is...consider the two ways to arrive at B&W final picture:

1) Start with high IQ colour image -> compress it to AVCHD -> perform B&W conversion.

2) Start with high IQ colour image -> perform B&W conversion -> compress it to AVCHD.

Now it is my contention that workflow 2) makes better use of the AVCHD compression since you're presenting the compressor with a simpler image. 17mbps describing a B&W (one channel) image is statistically less lossy than 17mbps describing a colour (three channel) image.

Of course shooting colour in-camera gives more options in the grade (as anyone who's used the channel mixer in PS to perform B&W conversions will tell you).
 
Is anyone still shooting 17mbits after the hack? Why would you do that to yourself? It does make a huge quality difference... color or b&w to go to at least 32.
 
Blackout said:
Is anyone still shooting 17mbits after the hack? Why would you do that to yourself? It does make a huge quality difference... color or b&w to go to at least 32.
Click to expand...

I've not installed the hack... but I also would question why someone would do the hack, then limit the bandwidth, unless there were card write errors, or the like...

I don't have enough time to do my 'B&W' demos... let alone try various bitrate options the hack has...
 
Phew!finder said:
I was referring to the efficiency of compression.

Of course if we were shooting redcode or other form of RAW then there's no point in destructively baking in B&W.

What I mean is...consider the two ways to arrive at B&W final picture:

1) Start with high IQ colour image -> compress it to AVCHD -> perform B&W conversion.

2) Start with high IQ colour image -> perform B&W conversion -> compress it to AVCHD.

Now it is my contention that workflow 2) makes better use of the AVCHD compression since you're presenting the compressor with a simpler image. 17mbps describing a B&W (one channel) image is statistically less lossy than 17mbps describing a colour (three channel) image.

Of course shooting colour in-camera gives more options in the grade (as anyone who's used the channel mixer in PS to perform B&W conversions will tell you).
Click to expand...

I doubt the difference in quality would be noticeable.

Here's a scene I lit for B&W but shot in color. Note how the color version just doesn't look as good:

IK5OPl.jpg


tktNzl.jpg
 
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That is a GREAT visual example andyjar! What steps did you use to convert the color to B&W? and yes the B&W has a very film noir period look to it that the color can't come close too, very,very nice!
 
Cool.

I guess (especially with GH13 hack) the empirical difference can be minimal. Still, theoretical improvements, however small, are what keeps us camera geeks glued to the internet and excellent forums like this. Otherwise, why would we ever discuss notions such as bitrate, colour subsampling, GOP-length etc. to such great degrees?

GH1/13 footage does look grand in mono though, dunnit?
 
Blackout said:
Is anyone still shooting 17mbits after the hack? Why would you do that to yourself? It does make a huge quality difference... color or b&w to go to at least 32.
Click to expand...

The 17mbps I used in my example was just for illustrative purposes.
I hope it's abundantly clear that the specific number can be arbitrarily changed without affecting the principle of the argument...
 
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