Side by side comparison between color and in camera black and white.

[alfredo]

When shooting color at night or in low light situations my P&S, because of the small sensor, would be quite noisy. A short time ago I switched my camera over to Black and White. What I found from a shoot last night was that there was less visible noise using Black and White.

Both were cropped at 100% then pasted side by side. Neither one has had post processing other than the crop.

[ohheckyeah]

1. That's a big difference in the visible noise. n/t

[ManiacJoe]

2. B&W is one of the secrets for high ISO shooting.

Not only does the B&W conversion help hide the noise, folks tend to expect some noise in B&W shots.

Slightly overexposing the image can also help handle noise.

[alfredo]

3. B&W extends the usefulness of a small sensor camera.

[ohheckyeah]

4. I really like black and white

a lot. There's just something artsy about it. :-)

[alfredo]

5. A painter has to deal with the limitations of a two dimensional

medium. Black and white takes out the "dimension" of color.

I think black and white makes one approach photography as a story teller.

[ohheckyeah]

6. Exactly.

It's about the story and not the color. I miss having a darkroom. When we moved out to the country I couldn't have one unless I had a separate septic system or some other means of disposal for the chemicals.

[alfredo]

7. I miss my Omega enlarger.

[alfredo]

8. I learned on an enlarger just like this.

It had a distinctive lamp house.

I used it while in the Army. I had an Omega of my own in the 70's.

[ohheckyeah]

9. That's not exactly like the one I learned on

but very similar!

[alfredo]

10. We had a photo lab on our Army base. It had several for

our use. Our big problem there was dust. We were in the sub Sahara, so dust (and flies) was our constant companion.

Here's one I did on that old Omega.