Probably well known and obvious to those who read the manual but I was surprised to find that shooting in B&W mode makes no difference really with the image when capturing Raw. When capturing JPG I used it to eek out a little more performance in low light conditions, ie our house night and day. So I was a little more than surprised when I opened the images in UFRaw and they were color–compounding my surprise was the fact that the thumbnails were black and white. However, it was a pleasing discovery because I found that most of the images worked better in color than in black and white, though ones I wanted to convert were easy to do with Gimp (I’m sure UFRaw has an option, my non-maual reading self just hasn’t found it yet).
Below are two shots that are both equally nice in color or in grayscale
This last image is a perfect example of what I would have missed had I actually captured this in black and white. It is so much more vibrant and exciting in color, partly because of all the noise that ISO 1600 introduces, and it just wouldn’t be the same shot in grayscale.
If anything this was a happy discovery but I really need to sit down and read my Magic Lantern guide.
Tags: Baby, Black and White, Canon, Color, Gabriella, JPG, Photography, RAW
I have a similar feeling on high ISO, sometimes it can give it a nice moody feel that you could not get otherwise. I find it funny in viewing some of the SLR forums how scared people are of having a little noise in their images. How fast we forget how noisy film was at high ISO.
Good job on the pics! I love the B&W image.
Thanks! I think that with regards to noise many people can get mired in perfecting technique so that they lose sight of the art. My feeling has always been that good art is 90% composition 10% execution. Just make sure what you do is expressive because the rest can be gotten through practice.