I have mentioned before how Jeff Ascough gives no choice as to what final photo's are given to his clients. I would love to have the confidence to do this. Just yesterday a client asked to see all the photo's I had taken in black and white in colour. Like a lot of photographers that shoot a lot of black and white, I have already decided a shot will be either black and white or colour at the point of shooting it. Its a shame then that clients often ask to see the image in a different way to what was actually visualised in the first place. When I used film only there was no choice for the client. If the images were black and white they were shot on black and white film and that was that. I then had a medium format camera which I shot anything I visualised in colour.
Nobody complained and nobody asked for it any other way.
The problem sometimes is that in some extreme low light situations I can be shooting at high iso's and therefore the noise can only look good in black and white.
In colour the noise appears in coloured speckles and in black and white it appears not much different from 35mm film grain. I rarely use any noise reduction as this softens the image and can end up giving a sharp picture a smudged painterly look.
So digital has given the client a choice that they were never qualified to have. I will soon be getting a D3 as this camera can shoot photo's with next to no noise even at speeds of 3200. Problem solved then, or is it? It can also shoot at 6300 and even crazy iso's way above that I never even considered would be possible (25600). So I know for my wedding work at times I will be pushing those iso's to their limit to capture images which would never have been possible before. I will be capturing even more stunning images but I am no further forward as I will still end up with a lot of images that are shot only to be in black and white.
Even these crazy iso's that show noise will be acceptable in black and white wedding and portrait work. In colour however they will still be prone to the hot pixels that glow like a farmers wart on the end of his nose!
So what do I do? For now I can only advise my clients to leave the images as they are, but the choice remains theirs.
For now!
Nobody complained and nobody asked for it any other way.
The problem sometimes is that in some extreme low light situations I can be shooting at high iso's and therefore the noise can only look good in black and white.
In colour the noise appears in coloured speckles and in black and white it appears not much different from 35mm film grain. I rarely use any noise reduction as this softens the image and can end up giving a sharp picture a smudged painterly look.
So digital has given the client a choice that they were never qualified to have. I will soon be getting a D3 as this camera can shoot photo's with next to no noise even at speeds of 3200. Problem solved then, or is it? It can also shoot at 6300 and even crazy iso's way above that I never even considered would be possible (25600). So I know for my wedding work at times I will be pushing those iso's to their limit to capture images which would never have been possible before. I will be capturing even more stunning images but I am no further forward as I will still end up with a lot of images that are shot only to be in black and white.
Even these crazy iso's that show noise will be acceptable in black and white wedding and portrait work. In colour however they will still be prone to the hot pixels that glow like a farmers wart on the end of his nose!
So what do I do? For now I can only advise my clients to leave the images as they are, but the choice remains theirs.
For now!
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