Re: Your experience having a Sony camera converted to Monochrome?
ATPphoto wrote:Previously, when shooting color then converting to B&W, I would go through several steps in PS just to get the monochrome look I wanted. More involved than just clicking on de-saturate or a similar function.
Then I'd adjust all the color channels, one by one. There was another third step, but I don't remember it now.
I still don't follow. First of all, there are B&W profiles in LR that mimic spectral response of B&W film perfectly, in fact you could have them applied automatically as you import images into LR.
ATPphoto wrote:
So I can now get straight to the LR part immediately, straight out of camera, and the adjustments needed there are often minimal. Certainly not as involved as before.
Again, you get this for free with a color sensor. About 60% of my images are B&W. I have 3 presets that I built once on top of LR's B&W profiles: panchromatic, panchromatic+yellow, panchromatic+red. They show up in the dropdown when I import images into LR. Same in Capture One.
Moreover, the point I made earlier was that these options are actually better than a monochrome camera, because they mimick the response of B&W film, and films sensitization has evolved over many years to deliver the response that's pleasing to a viewer, particularly when it comes to skin tones and foliage. Meanwhile, monochromatic sensors simply deliver desaturated color. This is where the sensitivity boost comes from, essentially it comes at the expense of a quality tonal response. There is no free lunch.
My position is that a mono-converted camera delivers strictly worse results than a color camera with intelligent B&W filtration applied digitally.
To clearly see this inferiority, set up a studio scene: 100% white backdrop and a model with a lot of exposed skin. Look at your B&W image from a mono-camera, and then compare to an identical color image with the LR's BW preset applied. I am convinced that the latter will win in a blind test with random viewers.
[EDIT] Thank you @freaklikeme for correcting me regarding the green response.
Re: Your experience having a Sony camera converted to Monochrome?
ATPphoto wrote:Previously, when shooting color then converting to B&W, I would go through several steps in PS just to get the monochrome look I wanted. More involved than just clicking on de-saturate or a similar function.
Then I'd adjust all the color channels, one by one. There was another third step, but I don't remember it now.
I still don't follow. First of all, there are B&W profiles in LR that mimic spectral response of B&W film perfectly, in fact you could have them applied automatically as you import images into LR.
ATPphoto wrote:
So I can now get straight to the LR part immediately, straight out of camera, and the adjustments needed there are often minimal. Certainly not as involved as before.
Again, you get this for free with a color sensor. About 60% of my images are B&W. I have 3 presets that I built once on top of LR's B&W profiles: panchromatic, panchromatic+yellow, panchromatic+red. They show up in the dropdown when I import images into LR. Same in Capture One.
Moreover, the point I made earlier was that these options are actually better than a monochrome camera, because they mimick the response of B&W film, and films sensitization has evolved over many years to deliver the response that's pleasing to a viewer, particularly when it comes to skin tones and foliage. Meanwhile, monochromatic sensors simply deliver desaturated color while boosting the green response. This is where the sensitivity boost comes from, essentially it comes at the expense of a quality tonal response. There is no free lunch.
My position is that a mono-converted camera delivers strictly worse results than a color camera with intelligent B&W filtration applied digitally.
To clearly see this inferiority, set up a studio scene: 100% white backdrop and a model with a lot of exposed skin. Look at your B&W image from a mono-camera, and then compare to an identical color image with the LR's BW preset applied. I am convinced that the latter will win in a blind test with random viewers.
Aug 13, 2025 at 01:36 PM
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