Black and White or Color? (High Contrast BW Critique)

[Sherman71]

Unsure of when to use BW vs Color.
Camera was a Nikon D300.  Photo with Sunglasses was a 300mm f4.5 AIS.

[Sherman71]

My gut says the BW looks better (Not sure how to post mutiple pics)

[Sherman71]

My daugter's ballet lesson (parents not allowed in class and had about five minutes to shoot these before class begain).  Again not sure about Bw vs color.  60mm Nikkor 2.8 D

[Sherman71]

Bw

[Sherman71]

Flash was off camera and I was trying to get shadow...

[Sherman71]

Last one. 

[pluton]

Unsure of when to use BW vs Color.

My habit is:  If the color is ugly, try black and white.
Your color rendering on all the shots is biased toward the cool/blue side.  Try eliminating the cool blue look.  If the color is still unpleasant...get rid of it!

[tommiejeep]

Keith, during my last few years shooting film I used B&W 90 % of the time.  With digital I was pretty much with you but recently have started going back to B&W as the option I am shooting for.  Living in Colourful India, I always do both.  I always preferred B&W for photojournalism in Southeast Asia and most publications were not printing colour often.  Never made Life Magazine anyway 

Sherman, great subject matter.  I am not really seeing high contrast, looks pretty muted to me.  I'm still working on custom B&W settings for the Pen F but use jpeg and Raw now until I become satisfied with OOC B&W.   Most people want to see my colour images but slowly swinging towards the B&W .  My audience for sports always wants vivid colour but a couple of Pro Athletes have started using my B&W images for their promo and Facebook images so the youngsters think it is cool 

I still prefer CNX2 U-point selective tools.  I like the Black and white Points also.

The penultimate image (chin on hand, is my favourite,

Cheers,
Tom

[David H. Hartman]

To my eye and on my display your last three photos lack midtone contrast. I'd try adding a gentle "s" curve to increase the midtone contrast. For color images using an "s" curve in LCH will only increase the midtone contrast but not the saturation. In PS CS2 one curves with luminosity blending to increase the midtone contrast without kicking the color saturation.

Dave Hartman

[armando_m]

#1 I prefer it in B&W

[Thomas G]

#1 - B&W.
In the color version, the blue sleeve misleads the eye away from the girl's face.

#2 - dunno.
The capture suffers from the blue basebord being the sharp element.
If I would be to keep it for the sentiment (yes, I sometimes do that) I'd probably unsharpen the baseboard, desaturate blue and play with white balance.

#3 - OK. B&W.
#4 - OK. B&W. Wide angle? Focus is on the side of the nose... Works maybe just so but is interesting.

#Last one - OK. B&W. Also self portrait in an nice diagonal set of lines 'growing from you'