Shooting/lighting for B&W

divamum

I have some portraits coming up which I KNOW need to go to B&W. To date, I haven't been entirely wowed by my portrait conversions - they're ok, and I can tweak them, but I always feel that I could have done something differently at the time of shooting to improve the results. In particular, I find that I have to boost reds and oranges to get the skin tones looking lighter and more natural, but then that can mess with other elements in the image (depending on the colour of those elements).

I'll have access to a full studio of gear which I can use freely (within the limitations of my studio technique - the gear exceeds my abilities at this point).

Any tips for lighting better for planned conversion? As always, point me to other articles/threads elsewhere if you know where they are. Thanks!

Tim Kamppinen

One thing you can try is using a green or blue gel on your background light, and making sure that the subject's clothes aren't that color. Since it will be the only blue or green thing in the frame you will be able to adjust its luminosity or contrast independently. Also, for the skin tone issue that you mentioned, you could use two adjustment layers and mask one off of everything but the skin so that you could adjust the skin tones independently. Layer masks are you friends! Also, in general I find that more dramatic lighting setups with a high key/fill ratio (i.e. deep shadows and bright highlights) are well suited to B&W conversion, whereas a more even lighting arrangement can end up looking boring in B&W if you're not careful. I think the main thing is to have light that models the facial features well, avoiding "flat" lighting.