B&W Photography with a Bridge Camera

Growing up, my father was an avid black & white photographer, and instilled an appreciation of B&W photographs in me. Now, these many years later, I wanted to try to my hand at it. Not feeling ready to tackle a DSLR, though, I bought a so-called "bridge" camera -- a Nikon CoolPix B500. While I like how relatively easy to use this camera is, I'm quickly realizing how limiting the automatic/semi-automatic settings are at times, and how helpful a decent photo editor can be when it comes to tweaking to get a more satisfying final product (in my case, I'm using the freebie version of Polarr). 

I'd greatly appreciate any feedback and tips on how to achieve those deep blacks and stunning whites that I'm after, either in-camera or with some judicious editing. I'm finding that there is a delicate balance between increasing contrast and losing definition. I've discovered that I can get a better gray scale range by shooting in color and converting to B&W afterwards, but I'm still not too happy with the overall definition of my shots so far (just not as sharp and crisp as I'd like). I will add that the CoolPix saves all images as jpegs, so I don't know how that's affecting file size---but assume it compresses quite a bit?

I'll be posting photos for critique in the B&W section of this forum, but wanted to introduce myself and explain why I'm here.  Thanks!

G'day Sandra

Welcome to the photo forum and hopefully people here can offer you some good advice - apart from 'just go out and buy a digital SLR plus a bevy of lenses'. I am a Panasonic superzoom user following many years of film SLR camera use, and love these very versatile cameras.

Being blunt at the start .. your Nikon is a mid-range superzoom aimed at people who primarily want an big-zoom automatic camera one or two steps up from a phone camera. Many here will advise that any 'good' camera will need some 'manual' operations, as shown by the P-A-S-M settings on the main control dial ~ which your model does not have. Now the 'however; - the scenes menu does offer you some useful tricks that the auto-exposure mode misses out.

The camera's SCENE menu will take you through maybe 20 different presets for varying subjects, and each will have a button-activated modifier to lighten / darken the image , or increase / decrease contrast, or increase / decrease saturation. [you might need to download the full user-manual to see all these options as the original manual only shows how to load the battery & camera card]

As to 'sharpness' of the image, two things here-
a) Nikon lenses are known as good, clear lenses so the results 'should' be okay, and
b) the more zoom you use, the more any 'camera wobble' will show up, so you may need to practice holding the camera extra steady when using over 10x zoom

More on the B&W stuff later
Hope this helps
Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

Having an appreciation for B&W images isn't the same as being able to create them. And likely your experience is with film, which behaves differently. You might consider picking up a (non-digital) SLR and some Ilford B&W film.

That said, the above is true. You can start with color images and work on your conversions to B&W, including learning about tones, luminance, zones, and how digital differs from analog (film) in this area. And accept the reality that it's going to take some time to learn to accomplish what you want, and create your vision. A few "tips" won't do it. It's up to you, your vision, and acquiring the skills necessary to create what you want.

I greatly appreciate these comments. I do regret that I didn't research the various types of cameras further (spent two weeks agonizing over it, based on my budget), but I'm committed to learning and doing the best that I can with what I have available to me. Maybe I can look at it as a good way to get my feet wet to digital photography, and can start looking for something more versatile. As it turns out, friend of mine emailed me last night that her FIL is getting rid of some "old cameras," and one of them sounds like a decent SLR!

In the meantime, I will be posting a few of my recent photos for critique and suggestions. My favorite subjects are old barns and architecture, so most of these attempts fall into those categories.

Many thanks again.

On an unrelated note...is there any way to delete the duplicate post that I inadvertently created? 

Sandra-Ferrell wrote: On an unrelated note...is there any way to delete the duplicate post that I inadvertently created? 

Not really as DIY but through the intervention of a staff member.

The "!Report this" button can be used for that I think.

G'day Sandra

As a wise person said to me as a late-teenager.... "always buy the best you can afford and do the best with it that you can". You have done the first bit already - now for the other bit

Back in film days I - and others here - processed and printed heaps of negs with varying results and I occasionally won awards. Okay - but he thing is that back then some chemicals used altered the tone of the film slightly, and some photo papers were factory toned to give slightly different results as well. It meant that I and others could view an exhibition and see 'blue' or 'brown' or 'olive' or 'dead-black' toned images and enjoy them all

As well as this, B&W 'togs had available a series of coloured glass filters that were attached to the lens where the use of that filter altered the B&W tones of the film in various ways ... lightening or darkening the reds or blues or yellows or skin tones etc.

Your Nikon shoots in JPG mode, and the images so produced will be in colour. All okay there. Most current photographers use a version of Photoshop for JPG images - and the home-user version is PS Elements ~ costing about $us50+/- - and it provides 1001 ways of doing stuff to your JPG images. One of them is adjusting 'colour curves' to create the same sort of thing that the coloured filters did back in film days

What I would suggest you try is experimenting with the camera's Scenes offerings, grabbing a copy of PS Elements [match the version number to your copy of Windows or Mac software] and experimenting with altering the Red-Blue-Green colour curves and see what you can come up with

As Gary says above "You can start with color images and work on your conversions to B&W, including learning about tones, luminance, zones, and how digital differs from analog (film) in this area" - and enjoy your photography like we do

Hope this helps
Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

Sticking with digital instead of film, the photo editing program can help. As already mentioned, start with a full color image with as much quality as possible. Here is a link to a photo essay on my blog on B&W renderings -

photographyintro.com/blackandwhite_presets/

While I started with a RAW and a TIFF image file, all of those editors will also take JPGs. Note that the Rawtherapee editor is a free download, and has tons of film simulations. I did all that with an old desktop Windows 10 computer. I don't which of those editors are available for other platforms.

Kelly Cook