Seeing in Black and White

Shadows in the alley

I wasn't good at converting digital files to B/W.  Honestly I haven't had much practice, let alone training of any sort.  In the days of Tri-X Pans, I was messing around with Microdol-X:- the concentration and temperature of the solution, the timing and the amount of agitation..... And then the choice of paper (out of the very limited supply we had when we were still students) during enlargement, and again messing around with the enlarger lens aperture and the exposure time...... There were so many variables, we were actually trying to log every minor change and hoping to be able to come to grips with "winning" formulas.....  We ended up having only one formula as the hobby was getting too expensive...... 

Converting a color digital file to B/W involves even more variables and the change of each variable is so easy (usually with a slider) that it can get out of hand easily -- logging all the possible combinations of the variables becomes an even more difficult task.  And I wasn't doing enough conversions to gain solid experience..... I'll do a B/W when I fail to properly process a color file, the conversion was to hide my incapability during capture.  With digital, it is even more difficult to see in B/W, unless you have in hand a Leica M monochrome.  With a camera loaded with Tri-X, you have to force yourself to see in B/W until you load the camera with a roll of color film....