When I was a teen, I attended a summer photography class run by the city of Boston with my brother and friends. I believe we were given Polaroid cameras and black and white instant film and told to go out and take pictures of whatever we wanted.
I still occasionally shoot black and white as well as color film, but less and less each year. It’s still fun but the processing costs along with the wait is getting to be too much. Maybe this will be my last year shooting film.
That said, look at this image from a little Canon S100 digital shot in black and white mode. (click on the image for a more detail view)
As much as I like to plan, on occasion when I’m scouting, I just happen to see an image I want and I know I’ll never get again. Continuing on from the previous post; In this instance I had a Canon S100: 12 megapixels, 35mm film equivalent: 24-120mm zoom, flash, autofocus powershot with me. I hadn’t used it much and I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular but I was pleasantly surprised by the results. I’ve been on a B&W kick lately. I’ve been experimenting with film and digital with various levels of cameras. Although there is nothing that compares to the grain of real raw film, even when digitally scanned there is an attractive, oversaturated, sometimes painting like quality of the color S100 images that I like.
The original is above and the B&W conversion is below. I’m not a big fan of lots of post processing. Maybe because I’m lazy. ;-) I convert, set the brightness, contrast and sharpen if necessary.
I like this little camera, especially when I want to remain inconspicuous. I can see it as a great asset in street photography. It’s doesn’t produce Leica class results and it may be a bit small for your hands or not but it shines at wants it produces.
I’m also testing a Fuji XPro 1 but more on that in a future post. lb
Canon S100, 26mm F5.9 at 1/640s converted to B&W. minor modifications
Canon S100, 26mm f5.9 at 1/1250s minor modifications
realreality Productions leo f. brady 