Black and White In-Camera: The Moriyama Mode

You are going to be a black-and-white photographer, at least at first, and the GR IV is one of the best cameras ever made for seeing in monochrome as you shoot. Its in-camera black-and-white profiles are not afterthoughts; they are serious tools that change how you work and how you see. Let us learn them properly.

The Image Control options

The GR IV offers several monochrome looks under Image Control. The four to know are:

Monotone, a neutral, even black and white with a full range of greys. Calm and documentary.

Soft Monotone, lower contrast, gentle, good for portraits and overcast light.

Hard Monotone, increased contrast, punchier, with deeper blacks.

Hi-Contrast Black and White, the extreme, crushed blacks, bright whites, heavy grain, minimal mid-tones.

The unofficial Daido Moriyama mode

Here is something worth knowing: Ricoh's own manual has, in the past, described the Hi-Contrast Black and White setting in terms that evoke Daido Moriyama's aesthetic. It is widely called, half-officially, the "Daido Moriyama mode." Moriyama's signature, the look that influenced a generation, is called are-bure-boke in Japanese: rough, blurred, out of focus. Grain, high contrast, motion blur, frames that feel grabbed rather than composed. Hi-Contrast Black and White is the camera's built-in path to that world.

This is not a gimmick. When you set the camera to Hi-Contrast B&W, the live view and the JPEG show you crushed shadows and blown highlights, which trains your eye to look for graphic, high-contrast scenes, hard light, sharp shadows, silhouettes, the kind of light that makes Moriyama's work sing. Seeing the world this way as you walk is itself an education.

The workflow: DNG plus JPEG

Always shoot DNG plus JPEG. Set the JPEG to Hi-Contrast Black and White, or whichever monochrome look you are working in. Here is why this matters. The JPEG gives you the black-and-white image immediately, in-camera, so you compose and feel the picture in monochrome. The DNG raw file, meanwhile, records the full color data with all the latitude you will ever need. So you get the discipline and pleasure of shooting black and white, and you keep the option to make a richer, more controlled conversion later in Lightroom or Silver Efex if a frame deserves it. You lose nothing and gain the right way to see.

Metering for high contrast

High-contrast black and white lives or dies on the highlights. When you crush the shadows to black on purpose, you cannot also let the highlights blow out, or the frame turns to mush at both ends. So in very contrasty scenes, meter for the highlights. On the GR, use highlight-weighted metering, or simply dial in negative exposure compensation so the bright areas hold detail and the shadows fall where they may. A black-and-white photographer protects the highlights and lets the shadows go; that is the opposite instinct from color work, and it takes practice.

Shadow and Highlight Correction, used with restraint

The GR offers Shadow Correction and Highlight Correction that lift detail out of the darkest and brightest regions. These are useful for taming an impossible dynamic range, a bright sky over a shaded portico, but use them judiciously. Crank them up and your high-contrast look turns flat and grey, which is the whole problem you were trying to avoid. A touch to rescue a blown sky, fine. As a default, no. The drama of black and white is in the contrast, so do not engineer the contrast away.

See in tone

The deeper skill, which we develop in the "Seeing in Black and White" lesson, is learning to translate the colored world into tones in your head. Shooting with a monochrome JPEG profile is the fastest way to build that instinct. Leave U1 on Hi-Contrast B&W and let the camera teach your eye.