The Color of Black-and-White

/ Richard R. Barron
Photographer and lights

In photography news this week was the announcement that Leica introduced their most recent camera, the Q3 “Monochrom,” a black-and-white only digital camera.

Leica is the most prestigious camera brand in the world, and although I never used one, I know several people who have, including at least one photographer who had a Monochrom (Leica’s spelling) some years ago, and loved it.

The wind chimes on my front deck have been making music for a decade, and the weather has rendered them with a very interesting texture.
The wind chimes on my front deck have been making music for a decade, and the weather has rendered them with a very interesting texture.

The idea behind a monochrome camera is that the pixels, the light-sensing elements in the imaging sensor, are not split into three colors, red, green, and blue, to be mosaicked into a color image. The result is a more-detailed, more nuanced black-and-white image.

There aren’t that many monochrome cameras out there. Camera makers can’t scale a specialized device very well, so these cameras are usually very expensive. The new Leica lists for $7790, which means that even if you are completely devoted to black-and-white digital photography, it’s still probably out of reach.

I believe if Leica sent me one to use for a year, I would put it into service, but so much of the time, my newspaper and I need color, so it’s hard to say if I could make the best use out of it.

That mostly just leaves fine art photographers. Some of them are wealthy pixel-peepers (photographers who admire their own work on a big, high-resolution monitor), who might not ever sell or print any of their images. Others might actually be able to find clients who would buy monochrome images, but that market has to be razor-thin.

If I did have a monochrome camera like the Leica, or even the far-cheaper Pentax K3 Mark III Monochrome, my next question would be about how to get really beautiful black-and-white prints. A quick web search suggested a company like whitewall.com might be a good place to start.

Finally, if the idea of black-and-white digital photography interests you, make a point to try it with your current camera’s settings, or some of the grayscale renditions of your images in software like CaptureOne or Adobe Lightroom. If they look great to you, you’re already there, but if they lack what one reviewer called “exceptional tonal depth,” it might be time to start looking for your next camera.

On a hiking trip to southern Utah last month, I photographed the beautiful slot canyons of the San Rafael Reef. The color was beautiful, but rendering it in black-and-white shifted the tone and mood to something dark and brooding.
On a hiking trip to southern Utah last month, I photographed the beautiful slot canyons of the San Rafael Reef. The color was beautiful, but rendering it in black-and-white shifted the tone and mood to something dark and brooding.