Black-and-White with Digital Cameras Shoot your B/W images in color and then use Photoshop's channel mixer to convert to B/W. This allows you to choose the exact effect of using a colored filter in front of the lens after you've made the shot. This has many advantages:
1.) You can get any and all possible filter results with only one image.
2.) You can see what you're doing when choosing filter effects much better than while you're out shooting.
3.) You also have a color image for free!
4.) This is the serious one: you can use layers in Photoshop to apply different filters to different parts of the image. The only way to have gotten that with film was to either a.) use a filter taped together like a mosaic in front of the lens (not practical when you realize you also have to mosaic ND filters with them to compensate the different colors) or b.) composite print from several different negatives, again not exactly convenient.
5.) There is no advantage to using a colored filter over the lens of a digital camera when shooting because:
a.) The final images will still be colored. You still have to load them into Photoshop to make then black and white instead of black and red.
b.) It's easier to compose due to the brighter finder.
c.) There's no quality advantage: all digital cameras use color sensors anyway. Actually all color sensors are B/W sensors with RGB filters permanently painted on top of alternating pixels. Kodak made a very special B/W DSLR some years back without the RGB filter atop the sensor, and thus it did give the advantage of higher resolution and speed and you did have to use a color filter in front of the lens. Otherwise there are no B/W digital cameras common today.
6.) The
Canon 20D allows you to select color filter effects in camera, which is very handy if you only want B/W. It electronically applies the equivalent of a colored filter over the lens and converts to B/W in-camera. If you intend to spend time editing later you're still better off shooting in color and converting later due to #5 above. The 20D feature retains advantages # 2 and 5 and negates advantages # 1, 3, 4 above.
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