[SunDance]

I am confused about coatings and wonder if some Pentax lenses are better than others for capturing images that will eventually be processed and printed as black and white. I shoot a K-1. Your thoughts? Thanks in advance.

[tuco]

Lens coating helps reduce flare, improve contrast and focus the different wavelengths of color light at the same point (if not more). And that can help improve the captured image quality. Those things will not help you in your skill converting a digital color image to a grey scale or monochrome. But it can improve the overall image quality of the grey scale/monochrome just as it did with the color version. And today I think every major lens manufacture has lens coating as good as the next.

[DeadJohn]

B&W is less demanding lens-wise than is color photography. Issues of chromatic aberration and purple fringing are much less noticeable in B&W. Any lens that is good for color will be good for B&W.

What lenses do you already have for your K-1?

[Wheatfield]

I am confused about coatings and wonder if some Pentax lenses are better than others for capturing images that will eventually be processed and printed as black and white. I shoot a K-1. Your thoughts? Thanks in advance.

All of them are good. Don't over think this stuff.

[tuco]

BW film, or perhaps a monochrome sensor, is less demanding. But with regular digital photography you are shooting color and if you capture some chromatic aberration it will show up as an outline in the grey scale conversion especially if you apply, say, a colored filter plugin effect that is near the opposite color as the resulting CA.

[jatrax]

All of them are good. Don't over think this stuff.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This.

Remember you are actually shooting in color so whether or not you convert to monochrome later the image that is recorded is what you have to work with. Instead of thinking that some lenses might be better I think it is more accurate to think that some lenses that might not produce (in some situations) a great color image will still make a good monochrome one. I'm thinking in particular of purple fringing. Even if glaringly obvious in the original color image it is not going to be noticeable in monochrome.

A possibly relevant analogy: A wine maker once told me that the wine is at its best the moment the grapes are picked. All he can do is try not to mess it up from that point on.

[Alex645]

I am confused about coatings and wonder if some Pentax lenses are better than others for capturing images that will eventually be processed and printed as black and white.

Think about the five metrics that most lenses are tested for:
Sharpness, distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and transmission.

Except for transmission which is equal for color or b&w, the remaining four will affect your monochromatic image.
Without color, the sharpness, distortion, and vignetting will become more noticeable.

The average photographer isn't going to see or care about it. But if you're striving for the best, yes a better constructed/designed lens is going to make a bigger impact in black and white than in color.

[pschlute]

I am confused about coatings and wonder if some Pentax lenses are better than others for capturing images that will eventually be processed and printed as black and white. I shoot a K-1. Your thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Strictly speaking a digital sensor only records light, not colour. It is the filter in front of the sensor that enables a colour image to be produced. But in practice you are always recording colour images, unless you buy a monochrome camera.

The wealth of PP tools available today mean you can tweak that colour image endlessly before and during your conversion to b+w. I never heard anyone claim any Pentax lens is better for b+w than for colour. Contrasty ones will be good for contrasty images, but as you can add contrast in post I would say use any lens you like.

[dms]

I don't use B&W so this is not from my experience, but an uncoated or now more usually a single coated lens may be desired. I believe the original motivation was limited DR of film and printing medium, the flare reduces DR. For more modern materials a single coated lens does the same to a lesser extent and I think it is giving a "smoothness" [my word, I don't recall the exact phrasing].** You can still buy single coated new lenses by Voigtlander [Cosina], and the price as I recall is the same for SC or MC. You might look at cameraquest website.
_____
** Pschlute mentions higher contrast, w/ contrasty lens (e.g., MC), and I think it is likely reduced micro-contrast that gives what I said is "smoothness" but I am not sure. Chromatic aberration may be influenced by coatings (I don't know, but seems likely), and w/o MC that would blur the boundary between colors, causing the reduced local contrast.

[AggieDad]

I shoot a lot of black & white. Just remember you are actually shooting in color. You don't want to just use the black & white setting in the camera for your final images – all that setting does is create a jpeg by desaturating the colors. But the black & white setting is useful when you are first starting to shoot B&W as it can help you begin to "see" in monochrome. It can be used to check your work in the camera LCD.

When shooting B&W images, I suggest you keep a sharp eye on your histogram, making sure it covers the whole range from black to white. This will assure that you have good contrast throughout your image that will result in a B&W with a full tonal range.

Lenses? I actually use a couple of old Pentax-A lenses. This allows me to have lenses rated above 9 on the forum's lens reviews while spending less than $200 per lens. My latest acquisition is an SMC Pentax-A 135mm F2.8 that is rated at 9.25 for $125.

[5ks]

My experience is, in the digital era, that getting good results in monochrome photography is a lot more of a post processing issue than choice of lenses. Shooting RAW in the first place, of course.