I want to take black and white photos. What camera should I get?

Question

I really don't have a lot to spend but I love the effect the photo receives from being black and white. Hope someone can help. I'm looking to spend less than $300.

Answer 1

If you're getting a digital camera, just make sure it has the option to take the pictures in black and white on it, since you don't get as good a picture if you convert it to black and white on your computer. If you're getting a film camera, all you have to worry about is getting a good black and white film, preferably the kind that develops in real black and white chemicals, and you have to find a place that develops black and white, since not everyone has chemicals for that these days.

Answer 2

First of all shoot in colour, you have far more control in Elements to convert to B&W. Shoot in Raw and in the Raw Converter open as a 16bit image, this will help with the 'grainy' look. To convert to B&W try this, open your image and open 2 Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers, on the top layer just turn the Saturation slider all the way to the left (desaturate to B&W) on the next Layer down change the blend mode to Color, then by altering the Hue slider you can mimic the effects of a Red filter, Blue filter and green filter, and anything in between. Choose the setting that gives you the tones you want. Then Flatten the image, that's the B&W conversion done. Now for the fun part, using the Lasso Tool do a rough selection of the say the sky, feather lots (the amount you feather depends on the picture resolution try 50 to 150), then with the marching ants still showing the selection open a new Levels Adjustment Layer, the selection will have been masked out so you are working on just the sky. Then by moving the little triangles below the Histogram you can make the sky darker, lighter, soft and wispy or truly 'Gothic' it's up to you. Do the same with any other part of the image, you can control the brightness/ contrast of any part of the image this way, you are in full control. For this technique to work you need to be in 16bit mode from a Raw file, an 8bit Jpeg will just be torn to pieces and you don't want the Jpeg artifacts that are created by the compression (the 'graininess you refer to). Another tip is that B&W pictures should have no Black and no White in them, by which I mean no part of a B&W image should be 'pushed' to total Black or a total White, if they are you are loosing detail, and detail is the name of the game with B&W, they should be composed of shades of grey (they also print better), unless it's a deliberately High Key or Low key image. Look at any Gallery pictures to see what I mean. Chris

Answer 3

I have a sony dsc-10 digital camera/video recorder in one. I also HP 1310 printer/scanner all-in-one. With the camera and printer both in hand I print out black and white photos even though they may be in color. There is a feature on the camera that allows me to change only to black and white photo taking but never did that because I only print one or two black and white photos every so often.

Answer 4

Actually, it is better in digital to take the image in color and then convert it to B&W post processing. Otherwise, a lot of digital information is getting tossed with the in-camera conversion to b&w.
The key to a great b&w print is the lighting at the time of capture....some scenes just lend themselves better to b&w whether film or digital!
The c-41 emulsions (chromegenic b&w ) are very good and can be processed in any mini-lab. The Qualex (Kodak) outlab prints their b&w on color paper now.
Or you could learn film processing in a dark room you set up at home. It's not that hard or expensive and you can control the output.

Answer 5

almost every camera take b&w pics. I know the sony w70 and w100 don't( a customer return one for that reason) If you want a camera but doesn't have that function you can edit them later when printing. use a digital kiosk at a photo lab that has editing(kodak picture makers) or if you print them online and send them in you can edit them. I personally take every photo in colour and change it later. that way I have the option of colour or b&w

Answer 6

the kodak easy share digital camera model Z7590. It takes black and white and sepia tone pictures. I love my camera its a 5.0 mega pixel with 10 x optical zoom. Easy shares are really good pics.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

Best camera for this is a black and white camera. It's always better to take black and white pictures with black and white cameras. You could use a color one..but it's not as good when you take black and white using a color camera..

Answer 9

well, you can buy a digicam. there are digicams wherein there are options for some special effects. or not you can simply just have a mobile phone. there are also effects like solarized other than black and white. don't worry about the printing, you can simply beam it thru bluetooth, or send it thru MMS message, or thru the phone's memory card..

Answer 10

Any camera should work with black and white film.