Creating Monochrome Images using D-SLRS

Photography started in monochrome, meaning that there was only one colour in an image plus of course shades (or different tones) of it. This “colour” was essentially black and hence the alternate name for monochrome – Black and White ( B&W). Colour film as a photographic media came several decades later and slowly dominated photography. However, monochrome photography has its own charm, elegance and beauty. It is also worth remembering that some of the greatest practitioners of photographic art like Ansel Adams ( landscapes) and Yousuf Karsh (portraits) produced their masterpieces predominantly in monochrome. Processing colour film and printing in colour became relatively cheap due to the advent of mini-labs and consequently during last few decades, photography was mostly done in colour. On the other hand, processing of monochrome film and printing negatives commercially became progressively difficult. Due to all these reasons monochrome photography slowly was relegated to a niche market practiced by a few enthusiasts who had the needed skill and expertise. While digital dealt a severe blow to film, it did wonders to resurrect monochrome photography by making it very easy to digitally process (or convert) an image into monochrome with the help of post-processing. Moreover, new generation D-SLRs have considerable amount of monochrome processing built into them. This is the subject of our article this month. Before we get deeper, it is worth knowing two important aspects peculiar to monochrome processing viz. use of filters and toning.

Effect of colour filters in monochrome photography:

Filters are used very commonly in monochrome photography. These filters can be yellow, orange, red, green, etc. To the uninitiated, use of colour filters in monochrome photography may seem strange. To understand why these filters are useful, you need to first know what a filter does. Any photographic filter essentially passes the light of the colour of the filter and blocks its complement colour. Thus, a red filter passes red ( wavelengths of light) and blocks blue which is its complement colour. The colour that is passed is rendered lighter and the colour that is blocked gets darker in the image. So, if you use a red filter, the objects with colour red will appear lighter and those of blue ( blue being a complement to red) will be rendered darker. Thus, a red filter will make the blue sky very dark. The stronger (deeper) the red colour of filter the darker will be the