This is the way a presentation should be done: no begging for likes, subscribes, etc. (though for this guy I did because I want to hear and see more as a novice just starting to shoot pictures with film).

Best description of “normal” view I’ve heard. It’s not field of view but front to back relationship.

You brought it to the point and to the true meaning of photography, which is not 'recording reality' but 'drawing with light'.

Gosh. More please. How refreshing - a no frills, no expectations but otherwise wonderful presentation delivered in such a way as to inspire and encourage. Extraordinarily rare.

No pressure to subscribe. Subscription earned.

Great job JB! At 80, I've decided to shoot 2024 with B/W only to rev up my creative juices! I've been shooting since I was 10 and I'm trying to get back to my initial love of photography with included a lot of B/W with a first dark room course while in school at Carnegie Mellon in 1967-69. You address so much of what my senior mind is confronting. Thanks! Looking forward to more from you. Dan

Why I shoot B&W? Simply because I love it. It's the looks, the mechanical feel of my old SLRs and my approach to make it look perfect from the very beginning without post processing. It's a wonderfully slow way of taking pictures...

Seeing in 3D is a great point! The reason I still shoot with a 0:41 camera or my medium format cameras is that I love the 3D look in the view finder and the slide on my light table. For us old guys it's like looking at images with the old ViewMaster. I struggle after scanning to a digital image because the image is converted to a 2D image. And, I love shooting with b&w film and in b&w mode when I shoot w with my digital camera.

My career began in the mid 1950s, when it was primarily large format bw. Now long retired, I have been enjoying bw again, including film!

Interesting video, thanks. I’ve said this elsewhere and I think it’s worth repeating; colour is descriptive, black and white is interpretive… ✌️

B&W is to photography as Haiku is to poetry.

I love the B&W video presentation, and your honest delivery style ; and I agree completely with your explanation of why B&W photography is such a great format. More insights from you please.

I love black and white particularly for portraits. When you use B&W for portraits it is as if you can look into the soul of the subject. This clip was superb, you expressed how I feel about B&W.

Your video resonates so clearly. The more i hear people discuss their monochromatic motivations, the clearer my own reasons for choosing it become. Thank you for sharing your insight, both about black and white, and about the 50mm lens. I hadn't quite understood the "50 is normal" until you explained it in terms of the distance between objects. Brilliant insight.

JB I’m 76 & I’ve been taking b&w photos since my father handed me a brownie in the late 1950’s. Great video keep it up Howie G.

I would add a second good reason, one that many others have espoused, and that is removal of the distraction of color. Focussing mainly on texture, contrast, form, etc., helps us to train our eyes to look for more graphical means of contracting an image. For me, I think my feeble mind gets overloaded with the color information and I lose sight of the more graphical elements, and then miss opportunities. My all time favorites of all my images captured over 50+ years of dabbling in this are of a nephew and later a niece when very young - both on film in B&W. Have recently returned to B&W film and use it along side digital regularly. After all this time I am still learning and enjoying the process.

Do not subscribe, do not like ! You didn't expect my contradictory spirit, I suppose ? Well, I'm glad to see that another person thinks the same way as I do. And when I see what you do I'm stunned. That's beautiful pictures, pictures you can stay a while, just looking at them, not pictures you just look for 2 or 3 seconds and scroll to the next one. Amazing.

My First DSLR. A Minolta SR 1 with a 50mm 1.8 lens or 1.7 forgotten now but the great camera I had next was the SRT 101 with the 58/1.4 It travelled the world over many times with me in the mid 1966s onward. I agree with your comments on B&W. I have always maintained that mostly, colour images are carried by the colour over the composition, mostly that is, not always though. With B&W one has to work harder, there is no WOW look at the colour. There is also never a WOW look at the shading, well very rarely, It is usually a WOW for the overall effect. The ambience. The tonality, the balance of objects combined, and actually the shading is often silently critical. I also have a full suit of Topaz AI applications and all their older programs as well. I use ACDSee Ultimate as my main digital process now using Olympus and Panasonic M43 systems. The need to work harder for B&W is still true though.

… wonderful to hear someone speaking because of love - and not for money. Thank you. I have subscribed anyway 😊

My life is in black and white. I have mostly shot in black and white. My drawings are done in black and white. And my favorite dog of all time was black and white. Yet I can look at the world in gray tones.

I love shooting in B&W, both film and digital. My favorite film stocks are Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP 5 plus, both 35 mm and 120. I also love shooting the Actos film simi,action on my Fuji cameras. I also like pushing my film sticks to get a grainy, high contrast look. Lots of fun!

Excellent presentation and explanation. Short, sweet, and to the point. Thank-you for taking the time to make this short video. Learning the art of BW photography is exhilarating. Playing with light and shadow, line form, texture, etc. is a blast. Both good,and not so good, BW photos draw you in instantly. To my photography it is a bonus that BW is already abstract. I still shoot color depending on the situation

If you keep telling people not to sub & like while being humble and informative in your videos you will just keep getting more. 🙂

Totally agree. Sometimes when I need or want to edit past what looks natural I make it black and white. Not the only reason but it’s one

Dejligt med en rolig video, uden en masse klip. Ærlig snak. God forklaring der er til at forstå.

I'm glad you're doing this for whatever reason, and I've liked and subscribed. I'm looking forward to the next one.

And I too still have my Minolta 101 and an XE7. I have the Rokkor 16mm Fidheye, 28, 58 1.2, 135 2.8. Which I’ve also used on my GFX50r and 100s

Great video! Recently I dusted off my old film camera from my college days (Olympus OM-2n), and I only shoot B&W with it. It’s been fun. I’ve been trying different film stocks and reliving my photography experience from 35 years ago! Btw, minor point. I know you talked a lot about our vision, and I learned some things from your perspective. But one thing I want to mention is that even though our field of view with our eyes is very wide, our eyes can only focus on a very small portion of it at a time. So to me at least, portrait photography or telephoto sports photography with a blurred background seems like an attempt to recreate how our eyes actually see things. Just an additional thought. Please keep making videos. I’m sure folks can learn a lot from you.

Keep ‘em coming JB. You make us feel right at home.

On switching to digital, I immediately started experimenting with INFRARED as I liked the dark-sky effect. I had shot a lot in the past using infrared film, but it was frustrating. With digital, I had the mirrorless camera modified by removal of the "hot mirror" which blocks infrared. It is so much easier working with digital. PS: some cameras do not need modifying, but they are generally from the early 2000s.

So refreshing: recording your video on in b&w. And your “one good reason” is excellent. Thank-you.

Yes, shooting raw but having the previsualisation in B&W helps a lot. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Thank you for this very interesting video. This is my first time on your channel and I subscribed. Looking forward for next ones. Cheers from Poland :)

This is maybe the first black and white movie I see on youtube...apart from the ones made a long time ago. I've always liked B&W and used a lot of ILFORD film for it before going digital. Film had its charm and people were thoughtful and more economical with the number of images. But it was quite time-consuming to work in the darkroom and do your post processing there. The digital era offers fantastic opportunities and some small shortcomings. I was recently at an exhibition looking at pictures of photographer Kary H. Lasch active in the 1950's onwards, mostly in B&W, I am incredibly touched and impressed when I see the content and quality of some of the pictures from that time. Thanks for your nice youtube post!

I've found being able to preview an image in black and white when using mirrorless cameras now tremendously helpful.

Wonderful video. Thank you. RS. Canada

Great video. I like that it was shot in black and white, it was a pleasant viewing experience

Incredibly refreshing! I feel like I'm sitting at your table with you and absorbing decades of photographic wisdom. PLEASE keep up the great work. PS: The shot at 4:27 is sublime! SUBBED!

Thank you for great message! I get asked these same questions all the time. Really love the insight about human vision being panoramic.

Liked your video a lot. Thank you! Pls go on this way ...

Thanks JB, well done!

That was great!! Gave you a like anyway, so TAKE IT! That question and your use of it for B&W output never occurred to me, but it is so natural. Yes, you are right that the casual observer would be thinking of the color rendition first even though there are other variables. And to have only tones just removes that issue from the get-go. Love your photos, especially the birch trees at 0:38 and the town with the towering mountain behind it at 4:30. AWESOME! And I have to comment that I started with a silver SRT 101 and 50 f1.7 on mostly Kodachrome. Seeing yours just warmed my heart.

Great video on Black and white photography. Still my favorite media.

Thanks JB, great content, relax pacing and delivery, keep up the ggod work; cheers from Montreal !

Excellent presentation. I particularly like the idea of “pre-visualization,” which I learned in my photography classes back in the late 1970s. It defines the difference between “taking” a picture and “making” a picture. Hope to see more wise insights from you.

How refreshing to see someone on KZfaq to share their experience rather than just to fuel their greed . Kudos to you, sir.

Subscribed and liked, firsty because you didnt beg me to do so and secondly because I really did like the content.

Looking forward to learn more. 😊

Excellent work Sir. Thank you! 🫡

La principal razón es la belleza de la impresión en papel. Quien lo ha probado lo sabe. Toda fotografía es tan realista ,que quitarle el color la aleja algo de la impostura del trampantojo. Así mismo ,la forma sólo necesita el claroscuro para ser descrita.Y es un descubrimiento o una sorpresa cuando vemos el resultado de la descripción de esa forma a través de una tecnología arcaica y comprensible como la de las sales de plata. Utilizar una antigua y buena cámara nos aleja del desenfrenado consumismo tecnológico. Un abrazo desde España.

This was a really good video.

Ein wertvolles Video - schon allein wegen der vielen klugen Kommentare darunter... Und weniger kluge sind auch immer lehrreich 😉🤗 Sie haben da etwas wichtiges angesprochen. Bei BW scheint es mehr wirklich um das Ergebnis als Bild zu gehen und nicht auch noch um Erinnerungsvergleiche, die uns auch hemmen können 🤗📸🙏

Good video. B&W like drawing is to painting is an amazing way of seeing something. Ansel Adams. The Zone system worked for him to produce a negative from the real world that compressed enough of the >15+ stops range of most outdoor sunny day views we can see with our eyes into something that when printed in the darkroom resulted in a contrasty image that didn't 'blow out' the whites or have large black areas of shadows. aka Pumped up. I knew Adams's printer Dave Gardner. He did a test with Unsharp Masking and showed it to Adams worried that he'd hate it. Sharper edges is also a way of enhancing contrast. Adams loved it, said he wished he could do that in the darkroom to all his images. (Of course he could, but it's really involved. I've done, once or twice just to try it). With digital anyone can go out and shoot an Ansel Adams level image. As your images here show, just because it's easier doesn't make it any less terrific. And while it's easy, doing it well still takes a developed eye and effort. Your tip on previsualization is a good one. Younger photographers take note. What's great about digital is that you don't need to put color filters on your digital camera, just use the color channels. What's good about previsualization is that even if you end up shooting only color you will be better at it because you'll have learned to understand 'value' better. So the process of learning what Adams did is now within anyone's reach. The best lessons are not to later make your vacation photos into B&W, but to go out and shoot with that intent, process them digitally. Making prints is always a terrific step (if you're not spending 80% of your time getting the printer to work while the cartridges bleed you into poverty.) I would call this Deliberate Practice. (A good example for me is from sailing. I can almost always tie a bowline faster and better than any more experienced sailor I've crewed with because I specifically sat down and repeatedly practiced all the best ways to do this. And did it every day until it was automatic. Doing it on the job for many more years wasn't as effective.) Tint/toning. This is more powerful than most people realize. In my B&W darkroom printing I made a lot of RC prints for handing out to the press for upcoming art exhibitions. These prints look okay, but if you slightly tone yours with selenium, they look a little more neutral and 'better.' If my artist wasn't up against David Hockney that week, almost always they'd run my print. Most of my prints I'd partially sepia tone which I think improved them. Another thing I almost always did was wiggle a clear piece of plastic sleeve with a little grease on it for part of the exposure. This blurred out the grain and instead of looking at a surface, you'd be looking at the image. Not sure this can be effectively done printing digitally. (Maybe with the higher resolutions that I haven't done it can be.) A lot of the attraction of B&W, toning and my blur trick is, as photographers we see thousands of images. I was really sick of 4 color magazine printing and even most of the high quality photo books. With color I knew I was looking at the limits of photo mechanical reproduction, which constrained the photographer's intentions. By eliminating color images are unified (maybe those bikers were all wearing mismatched colors that would've distracted from seeing their faces and expressions), viewers don't think, 'So that's what that town by the mountain looked like.' They know their looking at an artistic interpretation. Personally, I wouldn't shoot digitally in B&W. I'd want those color channels I could manipulate later. (But I can still Visualize B&W looking at a color scene. Maybe if you want to learn that.) Film...? I've shot a lot of film. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you do: use a compensating developer. (Weston used one, never owned a light meter.) I wouldn't set up a darkroom, I'd find some school or group and set one up that could be shared. No one is likely to spend the rest of their career shooting only film. Darkrooms take hundreds of hours to do what you can do digitally in a few hours. Digital is also easier to do well. (I've still got most of my darkroom stuff. Be happy if there was a group or school in Southern California who wanted to set it all back up so many people could get film out of their system. My set up was like Hurrell's but I only learned this later speaking with someone who knew him. Adams printed very large from 8x10 negatives so his set up was different.)

You tricked me into liking the video! On a more serious note, of like to thank you for sharing your knowledge.

JB! You are very funny, love your responses to the wacky questions!

clap👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 the world needs older people with experience to make these videos ... kids have enthusiasm but not knowledge or experience , calling all older photographers with decades of experience share your knowledge , especially for film and printing

Excellent video. Thank you. And let me say, the birch tree photos are exceptional!

Thank you sir, for very good video. I shoot mostly film b&w and now thinking to start shoot ing also digital, starting with cellphone.

Advertising executives and top professional photographers in Australia emphasised to me the benefits of photography students first learning to master black and white images. Tonal contrast, textures and surface finishes, the power of silhouettes, shadows and composing images tonally provided a strong grounding in photography. While colour may add another dimension, often the monochrome image had greater power.

Thank you for you insight. I prefer black and white to colour photography, as I also prefer film to digital. The way I see it is based on the things you want show. The elements of design. I like shape and form but mostly textures and when shooting with colour texture gets lost. Texture in the materials the movement or the grain of the film itself. That’s why I prefer black and white film.

Great vid, really nice photos, I subscribed. Thanks.

Hello; Your channel just happened to be a random popup on my computer this morning and I found it enjoyable and informative. I'm looking forward to viewing more of your videos.

Now, contrary to your advice, and only because i enjoyed your presentation and content, i'm doing both the 'Like' and 'Subscribe' things. I was also slightly influenced by the Minolta... the first camera i purchased new was an XD-7 ('11' in the US). Nice touch doing the video in B&W too - very easy on the eye. All the best from a cabin in a swamp in a rainforest in New Zealand.

Great video. The SR-T looks badass in black 😁

Thanks-very informative.

Thank you Sir!

Thanks for your time.

A man after my own heart. I started photography on a cheap film camera back in the seventies. Always black and white and processed and printed by myself. Great way to start learning. I then went on to become a professional for for over 30 years. Now retired and digging out my old film cameras to get back into simple black and white. What perfect timing to find your video. Man, there are some stupid comments! They just don’t get it. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos.

Some good landscape photos.

Great video... It's nice to hear a "fellow" old timer put the facts out there.

I seldom shoot for black and white, but I like b&w as an aesthetic choice. I don't care when people ask about how much processing my photos have or which camera I use. Those who ask questions like these usually have no idea of what photography is, so I take the opportunity to engage with them in a conversation explaining what a camera does and what an artist's intention is.

Absoluteluy genius! If you really love photography, every word in this vid is gold.

I likied this video and look forward to some more, Thank you JB!

My first reason for shooting B&W was that it was all I could afford when I started (with a Praktica FX2, giving you an idea of when that was!). Developing and printing I did myself. I still like processing appropriate subjects in B&W.

Thanks a lot ❤

I’m colourblind, so when I shoot in black & white I can often say “yes, that’s how it actually looked”.

I have been taking photographs for well over half a century and with the purchase of a mirrorless camera I have begun to shoot in black & white. My camera has two card slots: one for RAW, and the other for my monochrome jpegs. I rarely refer to the RAW files these days and have fallen in love with the monochrome images. By the way, I have liked and subscribed - because I liked what I saw and want to see more of it. Best wishes.

Nice and very very good video. Congratulations. From someone that loves B&w fotos

Wow JB. Thanks for posting. Great vid. I am on a one year project to shoot ONLY B&W. Back in the early days we had MF 120 roll film and the D76 process. That's what I learned on. A "Modern" camera was a 126 cartridge film camera with a fixed focus and aperture. Now century's later we have Fujifilm that is a champion in digital B&W. I hope I live long enough to see what the next generation brings. Great work. I appreciate your authenticity. Oh yeah... my one great reason? It's always a challenge!

I personally shoot black and white on film. I predominantly use digital for all of my color 35mm work, if I want to shoot medium or large format, I do that with color film. In my opinion, if I am printing color digitally, there is no advantage to shooting color 35mm film. I print all of my black and white work in the darkroom. Again, this is just the way that I do it, everyone has their own preferences.

Good thoughts. In the past, I would shoot color and then convert afterwards, sometimes I still do, but seeing the BW image in the viewfinder helps visualize more easily. In the real world, sometimes the colors are not that great, or they distract from the form--BW guides the viewer to see shape and texture.

I certainly like this video. "What is one big reason to shoot B&W?" -> Answer: "...when people view your work they will never ask you 'Is that the way it REALLY looked?'" Simple and wise rationale for B&W photography. Noticed a number of photographs [3:03, 5:06, 5:41, 6:20, 6:41] that had a black 'edge' (of unexposed film) around them - showing exactly what 'cut out' of the world in front of the photographer was showing in his/her viewfinder. This printing practice was used by my photography teacher (back in the eightees) to teach me how to precisely and carefully compose one's images. [a.o. the Leitz Focotar V35 allowes for a slightly wider projection of 35mm expoures].

Excellent presentation

THank you for this very interesting video

What a great video. I miss my wet darkroom days and processing and printing in black and white. Thank you for the wonderful video. Are you aware of any editing software that has a film emulation setting for Kodak Kodalith film? Thanks again.

I hear smart talk and read smart comments. This is very rare 😂 Thanks for sharing

For me there's no gimmicks, you have to have good compositions, which makes you work for it, no where to hide.

I subscribed within 5 seconds of watching the video.

Thanks for sharing )))

One great reason is because you can process it in your bathroom

Minolta SRT-101, my first SLR. Great camera! Later on, I had the 201 and 202. They were built like tanks and produced the best pictures ever!

As another 50+ year photography veteran (i.e. silverback) I have diverging opinions on some of your points, but overall I love this low-key summary. It does a great job of exposing a lot of the usually-unexamined assumptions that people make when creating photos. Looking forward to more of your thoughts. (One quibble: If you're going to continue presenting your videos in black-and-white - and I hope you do! - might I respectfully suggest you give a nod to the great traditions of black-and-white cinematography and fancy up your lighting just a bit? Watch a few re-runs of the old “Perry Mason” TV show and notice how the key-plus-fill-plus-rim lighting makes Perry look wise and acute. Hey, we all want to look wise and acute, don't we? It's not hard to do this without messing up your living room, either, just takes a little planning…)

B&W Photography is the ultimate abstraction. Flat, timeless, sizeless and no color. Completely different to reality. That's why is an Art.

been shooting and developing negatives & prints in B&W for forty something yrs. Yes, to successfully do this artistically over such a long period of time, I began to think and see in B&W. By this, colors in light become shades in monochrome where I can anticipate highlights and shadows in what i intended in the actual print. I imagine this was a sort of skill that I developed over time working with countless negatives and prints, but quite curious nonetheless

Avec le noir et blanc; on a une ambiance, qu'on a pas forcément en couleur, et les couleurs passent très bien en noir et blanc. avec certains pigments on peu coloriser la photo, faire des plaques autochromes Lumière, et tous les virages ( sépia, au bleu, à l'or, solarisation, avoir le grain de la pellicule, faire des effets de fusain etc).

Because it`s cheaper to buy than colour film. If i could get a roll of fuji velvia for the same price i bought it 10 + years ago and my pro lab had`nt closed down, i would still be shooting it. Rant over.

One of the first cameras a shot with was a speed graphic. Used 4 x 5 tri x sheet film. Did my own developing and printing, I always felt you take the picture with the camera and make it a photo in the darkroom.

Well done, straight up, black & white presentation! One thing you didn't cover, you must be brave to shoot and share b/w! Color is easy and catches the eye and clicks. B/W takes time to appreciate. I have my Lumix LX7 and ZS200 set for b/w in the PASM MODES with standard color in Intelligent Auto (IA) When shooting, I alternate between b/w and color just by turning the dial. It's been really eye opening to see the same scene/composition in color and b/w! By the way, Lumix now has L(eica)monochrome which I really like! Looking forward to seeing your other videos. 👍

Dibujar la luz, si!!

Nevertheless subscribed and liked just because it is nice video