I Didn’t Expect This from Sony a6700 – Black & White Street Photography

I’ll be honest: I didn’t buy the a6700 for black and white. Nobody does. You buy a Sony for the autofocus and the video specs and the sensor, and then one day you’re walking around with the Creative Look set to BW and you think, wait, what is happening here.

What happened is that Sony’s black and white JPEGs are genuinely good. Not good for a Sony good. Just good. Clean tonality, honest contrast, none of the muddy gray soup I was braced for. Straight out of camera, no editing, because I shoot JPEG and my editing workflow is called looking at the photo.

Now, is it my Fujifilm Monochrome-with-the-red-filter good? No. Let’s not get carried away. The X-Pro2 remains the king of my monochrome hill, and Sony’s black and white is a different animal: cleaner, more modern, less romantic. It’s black and white without the nostalgia filter. Crisp. Factual. A little cool, in a way I kind of like on the right day.

The surprise for me was how much I didn’t miss the film simulations. I’ve spent years in Fujifilm’s monochrome world, and picking up the Sony felt like switching from vinyl to streaming. Less ritual, same songs. Some days you want the ritual. Some days you just want the song.

A few practical notes from shooting it: the a6700’s viewfinder is fine for composing in black and white, and seeing the world in mono while you shoot changes what you notice. You stop chasing color and start chasing shape, gesture, contrast. It’s the best composition teacher I know, and it costs nothing, because the camera already does it.

Would I choose the a6700 as a dedicated black and white camera? If I could only own one camera, sure, it does everything. But I can’t only own one camera (it’s a medical condition), so the Sony stays the versatile all-rounder and the Fujifilm stays the monochrome specialist. Everybody has a role. It’s a whole system. Don’t tell my wife.