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YES!!! what a good topic i LOVE b&w photography, thats how i started, shooting 35mm black and white film ive made many b&w darkrooms in closets and bathrooms lol frankly, dealing with color is WAY harder than shooting b&w (so many variables!) – b&w should be really freeing~! i think most ppl will find a HUGE amount of room to play in post, since you can fuck with hues and exposure like crazy to get a cool b&w image. although id love a dedicated b&w camera, having the color data to play with in post can be quite interesting i would love to make a b&w feature! anyway heres a few shots i took the other day that i ~chose~ to treat as b&w bc the color was so meh... much better! *i would recommend listening to the song low desert by r.e.m. while viewing these pics

As anybody who reads my comments already know, I bought a 5D3 last Spring and instantly fell in love with the images I was getting. After almost two years of searching for the right camera for the stuff I was looking to shoot, I found it in the 5D3. But... I am the first person to admit that the post process of ML Raw can be a little tedious and requires a massive amount of storage. Since I am a hobbyist with narrative dreams, I’ve been searching for a second camera to shoot fun little vignettes in between shooting days with my 5D3. Shooting is a form of meditation for me and instantly calms me. After a couple of cameras, I ended buying an RX10ii on the cheap. Now I had the camera last year but struggled with getting good color from it. This time around, I’ve decided to mostly shoot in sLog2 and Cine2 with monochrome and I am pleasantly surprised by how good the images turned out on my first outing with it. I’ve always loved B&W photos and movies, but I’ve never really shot much with it, so I look forward to learning and experimenting more with it. Now, I have been posting around here for a few years and color science, correction and grading are all popular discussions but there is rarely mention of B&W. Does anyone shoot in B&W anymore? Does anyone have any video or screengrabs that were captured in B&W or turned to B&W in post that they’d like to share? Or even strong opinions for or against it? I’ll start off with a few screengrabs. The first two were shot in sLog2... And this one was shot in Cine2...

I like using "High contrast mono" picture effect with my Sony A7s for stills and have been trying to think of something to use it for video too. This is a quick and dirty video screen grab using my FD 24 1.4 L @1.4

Click to expand the 100% crops X-Pro 2 4K: X-T20 4K: As you can see the X-Pro 2 4K has far more detail in the shadows, more dynamic range and a crisper, sharper image. The film simulation modes are so nice on their default settings you don't need to fiddle... Which is just as well because unlike the X-T2, the parameters don't make a difference, even sharpness. Regardless I would put this image quality in the top bunch of all the 4K mirrorless cameras... It's bloody lovely. And the form factor is Fuji's best... More like a Leica than a fiddly X-T2 The drawbacks are rolling shutter and lack of articulated screen. There's also a slight screen blank-out when the recording kicks in (only half a second). The screen quality is crisper and nicer in general than the X-T20, both in live-view and during recording 4K. Yes there is a 10 min clip length limit, but right tool for right job and all that... If you look at the price of the X-Pro 2, put a Speed Booster on there to make it full frame, you are getting basically a mini A7S II with the colour and ergonomics fixed , for half the price! That is unless you need IBIS and S-LOG of course. It has some of the best dynamic range and colour in a punchy Rec.709 format I've ever seen, thrashes the Sonys. You have to shoot LOG on most other cameras to get the dynamic range the X-Pro 2 4K will give you straight off the card in PRO Neg. Std. film mode. It's a really good codec, with a fine noise grain. I am getting steadily over the 100Mbit/s mark even on a shot that shouldn't really need it. It's variable bit rate. I saw it peak at 180Mbit/s. Impressive. And it's really good in low light too.

I'll take a monopod over handheld any day of the week.

@kaylee were they shot with the 5D3? I love the last one... you had some nice late afternoon sun there? Have you read the Noam Kroll article involving manipulating color in post to end in B&W? It’s a pretty interesting read... http://noamkroll.com/how-to-color-grade-a-perfectly-cinematic-black-and-white-look/ However, as interesting as that is, for simplicity sake, I think I will go forward shooting black and white in camera. But I’d like to experiment with some colored filters for effect.

B&W video can look beautiful for the right subject...especially portraits of interesting faces and documenting everyday life. Without the distraction of colour, often the viewers attention is drawn closer to the subject and can give a timeless feel. Without the luxury of a monochrome sensor, it’s always best to monitor in B&W - since the composition often benefits from contrast in lighting and tone that is not easily noticed when viewing in colour. @mercer MLVFS is now working with the most recent nightly builds, making post processing very painless...especially when combined with Resolve for export. Here is an early ML video that made me upgrade to FF Raw a few years ago...something magical about it. This music video also looks great in B&W:

Black & White on the GH2 is fantastic...and I think you still have one?...you have to test between the high and lower contrast versions which you like if memory serves correctly, but shooting with the Drewnet Long GOP 9 hack I personally love the result! Andrew also posted some lovely footage from the GH2 he shot in B&W...may be in his guide on the camera.

Andrew deserves to be GH5s Tester

Image quality is only half the story at most, surely. My understanding is that high end productions use Alexas because they rarely go wrong, but when they do there's an unrivalled international network of companies that can repair or replace them at extremely short notice. Also they are an integral part of an established professional workflow, from support and grip through to edit and grading, that's entirely familiar to industry professionals in every corner of the world.

Adam Montville had a reply that to me makes sense. "my feelings on it: For a 1080p (or 2.8k RAW external recorder) for 10k +recorder, when the Blackmagic 2.5k is only $500-1500 on Ebay. I don't think the Alexa Classic is worth 10x the price, when you can rig up the Blackmagic for way less than the Alexa Classic. (Purely talking Classic Alexa, and not the newer models) The 2.5k Blackmagic has RAW, ProRes, and pretty good color and dynamic range, that I thought about going back to it, for how cheap they are now. Neither option is great for future proofing, but for Internet work, I doubt anyone could tell the difference." This is my part. There is some damn killer ass video in this short. Hell of a lot better than a lot of High end stuff if you ask me. And I Like this kind of look! Not every second of it is great but a hell of a lot of it is. And this is from a 800 dollar camera on ebay at lot of the time. And a hell of a lot of us have lenses that fit it. A BMCC is a hell of a camera for the money.

"On the BHPhoto site it says that the E1 is a "#1 Seller." I guess there are a lot of crazies out there. Or, informed videographers." I bet it is more Crazy, "cheap ass people", could be construed as poorer people, than the latter. But because of crazy people like you I might get one and join you being Crazy. I can almost bet Mercer will join us!

I found an old screengrab from my 50D ML Raw days that I forgot about. The projects I am working on are in the horror/thriller genre, so I tend to push the image to the darker side but I may have pushed this a tad too far. But the texture of Raw video still amazes me... So it would seem that I’ll lose the thickness of the image with sLog2 on the RX10ii but I’ll gain some dynamic range even with the significantly smaller sensor. Either way, I want to experiment more with B&W, in the future, in both Raw on the 5D3 and in sLog2 on the RX10ii. It’s interesting not worrying about color and WB while I concentrate on exposure and composition... it should be a good lesson for me to improve my skills as an operator.

Well those are good points for sure. But it seems like markr041 is the only person in the world that has one, and has shot videos with one LoL.

I had also the 128Gb Lexar and it worked well. Now I have the 64Gb Sandisc extreme pro, also good.

Hell you can buy a Panasonic GM1, not much bigger size wise, and have a Real camera for less money. Crazy people on here LoL. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-LUMIX-DMC-GM1-16-0-MP-Digital-Camera-Body-Only-NICE/152843026602?hash=item23962780aa:g:JFUAAOSwa0VaQzn2

Highly recommended. Honestly using MLVFS with 5Diii/resolve is easier than shooting/editing 6K on my GH5.

The SmallHD is much much better!

The green cast is more prominent than I imagined. But it is apparently pretty notorious on some of Tiffen's diffusion sets. You were able to grade it out pretty well though, so kudos on that. Was it difficult to tell if you had a good exposure using it? That issue aside, look how many stops you gained, I would at least say 1-3 easily. You were able to retain all the details in the shadows without any crushing, and your specular highlights particularly on his cheeks are not clipping. The rolloff seems pretty smooth too, but I'm not sure if this particular filter is attributing to that aspect. Diffused lighting will cause the same effect, its hard to tell. Cast shadows on the face seem pretty widely dispersed. Overall, I'd say the filter is a success. Would you agree? As far as a matte box. I've gone through a few, including a cheap plastic one, and I would only reccomend one that swings away. Otherwise the effort of having to move it off the rail supports is probably just as involved as screwing off a round filter every time you want to switch a lens. Also worth considering is your overall weight and footprint a matte box adds to your rig. It looks pretty damn cool and really helps cut out flaring, (with flags) but not the best solution when you want to be a bit more inconspicuous and nimble. I have both systems for various situations, which works out great, but it can get pretty costly. You don't want to cheap out in this area because you definitely get what you pay for. Here's the matte box I have which is on the cheaper end of the spectrum but not exactly cheap as in build and feature set: https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwju2t-k8qnYAhVFuMAKHeQOAc4YABAOGgJpbQ&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESEeD2UOS6SdwHGsCvTgYEXVax&sig=AOD64_0QpK1xICus5qTNgEKgBJHmElAslQ&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwjS7tek8qnYAhXE5IMKHTZSBlQQwg8IOg&adurl= (I paid about $50 more for mine so the above is actually a pretty good deal) Again, you'll need a rail/rod system, but that is fairly inexpensive and it gives you the option of also rigging up a shoulder mount/handle bar. There are cheaper options out there but you'll take a serious hit on quality and features. In my opinion that would end up being more cumbersome than helpful. There's also this, which would be a mix between round and square filter methods that attaches to the end of your lens: https://www.google.com/search?q=tiffen+square+filter+lens+mount&sa=X&biw=412&bih=652&tbs=vw:l,ss:44&tbm=shop&prmd=sivn&srpd=7818347533224399528&prds=epd:1216066361220322567,paur:ClkAsKraX6_JxfmyXzAm_-A-FWEAvnkAYuT-Ts4kJdyU_GKHh8IKH8pS-PrNPUGfelZpdsqXxB6VEFlrX6LYdlfhZqivLv4tesWVhblTYZOuPMg33QElBaaNuxIZAFPVH71dIZ_GVDBOHebJKXEVdXGc5F_PNg,cdl:1,cid:2490656465789744560&ved=0ahUKEwiB16qq9KnYAhUTwGMKHWz_B8UQgTYIwQU

Nice offer! Still dont understand why we should pay 100! Bucs for VLog upgrade... i wish you did this before i bought VLog)

A couple of weeks ago, I shot this punk show in a bar and made a highlight video for work. All of the slider B-Roll is shot by me on the Panasonic G7 with Cheap Focal Reducer and Canon FD 50mm 1.4 (CineV). Interviews were shot mostly on the Canon 7D with (I believe) the L Series 50mm 1.4. There was a lot of cool footage I wish I could have included. Maybe I'll make a reel of some of the stuff I've shot for work.

That gets you into used a9 territory as they're down in the $3400 range. The a9 tops the a7rIII in every way outside of stills mp, and its AF much better. Its just missing the PP's, but I've never had issues with the standard color profiles as long as you don't blow highlights. The oversampled FF 4k is flat out gorgeous on the a9. The zero blackout EVF makes everything else look like crap in comparison, including sports DSLR's. Personally I'd go in that direction over selling my a7r2 for the r3. Everyone is different. Cheers.

MLVFS is a way to mount MLV video files into a ‘virtual drive’ on your computer, so the video files can appear as CDNG’s. Basically it cuts 95% of the time spent with the traditional ML workflow. Best to read the ML forum, and/or check YouTube for installation tutorial - it makes sense once you dig through everything...it is well worth the effort. https://youtu.be/6v4EWj0zXDs http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=13152.0

@Hans Punk first off, thanks... some of your videos, amongst others, made me explore the 5D and ML Raw. And I could not be happier. So wait, with the new nightly builds, the camera will record as mlvfs? Or the process in post to open as mlvfs is simpler? I think the next short film I do with the 5D3 will be in B&W. I just love the classical, dramatic look of it. For what I bought the RX10ii for, run and gun fun and slow motion, I am fairly happy with it for a glove box cam. @maxotics I am glad you replied, because I love your recent posts on Log and Raw, though admittedly, and sadly, a little out of my depth. When I shot with sLog in the past, I did have some banding issues, so I was curious if the 4 luma values would help stave off the banding and I haven’t noticed any banding yet, where as with color in sLog2, as you know, it will creep up in wide sky shots. Anyway, thanks for replying and pushing me to understanding the technical elements of an image... one day I’ll be able to grasp it and have an intelligent conversation on the matter.

Hey Mercer, finally a post where I can say, "SHOOT LOG ALL THE TIME!" The drawbacks of LOG, chroma noise, only create a nice film-grain look in BW. All that said, I believe you'll still get a better image shooting RAW. I compared the RX10II to the professional X70 I had at the time an couldn't see a difference. In short, those RX10s shoot a sweet image and have a nice selection of LOG profiles. If I was going to shoot B&W that would be of my top 10 cameras. Nice images! I keep meaning to shoot BW. Another hangup I need to fix. Post a video when you have one! @UncleBobsPhotography First, you'd need to remove the Color Filter Array (like the Leica Monochrome) to shoot true B&W--in STILLS! In the RX10, it's actually a 1080 image downsampled from 4K, so you shouldn't have much chroma problems interfering with your B&W. In other words, not sure a b&w sensor would give you much benefit except it should be more sensitive to light (having no light-slowing micro-filter-lenses) and give you a higher effective ISO. h264 duplicates values in 420 or 422. Cracks me up that in some other threads people want 444 in 10bit. Who needs that? Give me 444 in 8bit and I'll throw a party! Anyway, h.264 stinks for everything compared to RAW but stinks less for B&W Rock on Mercer!!!!

I haven't been shooting any BW video, but I'm wondering, does any of the major camera models provide a format to shoot BW without storing the colour information? Or does h264 already handle this effectively? It wouldn't surprise me if MagicLantern had implemented BW-RAW, but haven't used ML for video myself. The Leica Monochrome with a BW-video format should be capable of some amazing dynamic range if done correctly.

After grading some sample footage from LensProToGo (pulling a former powergrade I did for the GH5 to the EVA1 footage with no adjustments) I'm totally convinced, that the EVA-1 is the best looking camera below 10 grands. Colorscience is superb (only slightly different than the GH5 - Powergrade worked perfectly), absolutely no image "worseners" like sharpening nor noisereduction - great detail and noise structure, and great motion cadence as well as dynamic range. Only the 8 bit artifacts in the slowmotion parts worry me a bit. Link to original grading (+ links to raw footage) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dy8djdDPyc

Perfect mount system.

I am guessing "P4P" stands for Phantom 4 Professional drone by DJI. Shoots 4K on a one inch sensor and 20mp stills (if memory serves... might only be 16mp), and is one of the few consumer drones that has a variable aperture.

The Sigma will do very well in that test, because they're both APS-C sized sensors and the D5500, in the Foveon world, is considered a 6 megapixel sensor However, against a Nikon D810/D850 (which has more pixels to de-mosaic and wider DR) things would get interesting. Very nice shot btw. That's is the kind of shot that I believe will look better from a Sigma. You have specular lighting and a lot of neutral colors (gray). The kind of stuff that makes color artifacts galore in bayer cameras. Really looking forward to your photo comparisons!!!!!

I am coming back to comment on the Focus monitor. So far is being excellent judging focus, and framing. I have only done a few tests, as I haven't any camera work at the time, but my opinion is very positive so far. I wish there was a double tap - magnification option, instead of the 2 fingers action, it could be faster and move the camera less. I wish it said there was a screen protector included, as I bought and installed an extra one (for 23euros! crazy expensive for what it is) and then I discovered the included one under everything!

also remember that 1080p RAW is less than 1080p video in resolution... debayering eats resolution. But ML RAW's forté lies elsewhere, as we know

That’s true but I remember hearing murmurings that Panny’s cinema division was a little annoyed with the consumer division because they felt they were scavenging their tech.