Any advice about getting into black & white photography?
I would love to do black & white photography as my new hobby. I’d like a nice camera but really don’t have a clue about which ones would be best for black & white photography. What type of equipment and such would I need to take really nice shots? And how much would this hobby cost?
As hinted above, for black and white photography, film is far superior to digital. This is not the case with colour as film is only slightly better than digital. Black and white can be easily developed at home, and developing your own film allows greater control. Remember that the whole photographic experience doesn’t stop once you press the shutter. You will need to develop your darkroom skills (you don’t actually need a darkroom to develop film but you do to make photographic prints) and printed or scanning if you want to move your final images into the digital realm.
All you really need is a slr or rangefinder camera, a 50mm lens to start with, some film, and some low pass colour filters. The filters are required with black and white because certain colours will have similar luminousity even though the colours may have a big contrast in real life. Red and green is an example of this and if you take a photograph of a red rose on the bush, the flower and the green plant will look to be the same colour in your final image. A filter will change the way certain colours appear in the final image by creating luminousity contrast.
A Nikon or Canon would be a good value way to start into black and white photography and a cheap little digital set to black and white mode will help you to understand the way different colours end up in the final image (referring to my last paragraph). One of the keys to great b&w images contrast.
The camera and lens should cost about $150, filters about $50-70, and a roll of film about $5. You can get the film developed and scanned cheaply as well. Another option with film is the faux black and white film which is developed using the colour processing C41 technique. The images are black and white but are cheaper to develop. The end result is not as good as traditional silver halide film however. Ilford FP4 and HP5 are good all round black and white films and I do like Fuji Neopan Acros 100. The Acros is a modern looking black and white film and the Ilfords are more of a traditional looking film.
All the best.
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