A New Old Monochrome Approach for my Street Photography
Started as a challenge, it becomes my new B&W aesthetics
Shooting Raw Feelings in JPEG with Canon M200 and Sony A6000
I didn’t expect it, but it happened again. That itch. That hunger for a black and white that doesn’t try to be elegant or polite. A black and white that scratches your eyes, hits first, and only later lets you understand what you’re looking at.
In 2014 and 2015 my work went in that direction. Extreme. Raw. Violent in its honesty. Influenced for sure from the Japanese photographers, in particular Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Takuma Nakahira. And it came right after Reality Remade, a project that stirred a lot of noise and pushed my vision into galleries around the world. Those images were rough silhouettes of my own obsessions. High contrast. Grain. Imperfections turned into intention.
People either loved them or hated them, which is exactly the reaction that tells you the work is alive.
And now here I am again. Not out of nostalgia. Not because I want to repeat myself. It started almost as a joke, a private challenge: could I recreate that brutal black and white using a simple Canon EOS M200, shooting only JPEGs, without touching post-production?
Spoiler: yes. Completely yes. And honestly, the little Canon surprised me. When handled right, its monochrome output has nothing to envy from the Ricoh GR’s famous B&W profiles.
This renewed dive into dirty, high-contrast monochrome also made me try similar settings on the Sony A6000. Again: I wanted to see if these “everyday cameras” could deliver a gallery-worthy look straight out of camera. They can. If you push them in the right direction, they give you a gritty street language that doesn’t need polishing. And I said to myself: if I am looking for poetry that is. That is exactly the direction I want to go.
What follows is not theory. It’s practice. The real settings I’m using right now to get JPEGs that feel alive with no intention of opening them in any editing software. This is the way I’m shooting again: instinctive, fast, a little reckless, and absolutely honest.
Canon EOS M200 – My “Hard Contrast” Setup
This is the profile that brought me back to that raw spirit. It turns the M200 into a small beast that spits out harsh monochromes.
Picture Style: Monochrome
Contrast: +4
Sharpness Strength: 5
Fineness: 1
Threshold: 2
Filter: Yellow
Tone: 0 (neutral)
ISO range suggested: 800–1600 for natural digital grain. But I can go also AUTO ISO.
Exposure: +1/3 EV when I want the whites to explode
This is the preset that convinced me the M200 could play in the same ring as the GR. Not because it imitates it, but because it gives me that same sense of urgency. With these settings, the JPEGs come out ready. Aggressive contrast, deep blacks, burned highlights where necessary. No RAW. No fiddling later. What you see in the moment is what you get. If you ask me why sharpness is so extreme, I answer that I don’t want to have soft images, but very sharp and that is where, maybe, there is the difference, a personal choice, with the Japanese old school.
Sony A6000 – Mono Grit for the Urban Noise
The Sony A6000 has a different personality but it can be pushed toward a similarly brutal monochrome.
Creative Style: Black & White
Contrast: +3
Sharpness: +2
DRO / HDR: Off
High ISO NR: Off
ISO range suggested: 1600–3200. Also here I can go ISO Auto and whith this camera I can put the limits on the ISO range, even at the minimum ISO.
Exposure: –1/3 EV for a darker, heavier atmosphere
If I want something even quicker, the “High Contrast Mono” picture effect works, but I prefer customizing the Creative Style. It lets me dirty the images just enough, making them tense, imperfect, and alive.
Exposure Settings
I go Manual with both. I feel only this way I have full control of the results. Usuay I stay f8, going down to f5.6 and f4, depending on situations with shadows or light conditions. I stay between 1/250 and 1/500 with the shutter speed. In my cameras I can’t count with the feature of the minimal shutter speed on ISO.
About the Aperture Question: f8 Wins
Whether I’m using the 35mm equivalent on the Canon or the 24mm equivalent on the Sony, the answer stays the same: f8.
It gives me depth, speed, and clarity of intention. I don’t want a creamy background. I want the world to hit me all at once. f8 lets me shoot instinctively, almost zone-focus style, and that fits perfectly with this way of working. If you think that my influence is just Japanese photography, you are wrong. Jacopo Benassi is a great reference for my photography.
Why This Matters to Me Again
I didn’t plan a comeback to this aesthetic. It just felt right. Maybe street photography needs this kind of honesty from time to time. Maybe I needed it. I want to count with a takeaway black and white because I think that photography needs to be fun. There comes a point as a photographer: when you're at peace and have nothing left to prove, and all you care about is growing and embracing the photographic experience more lightly, without trying to get every photo perfect.
Extreme black and white isn’t about style. It’s about stripping things down to their bones. It’s about refusing the comfort of “pretty pictures” and choosing the discomfort of reality. Back in 2014–2015 this approach pushed my work forward and opened doors I didn’t expect. You can find that work in several books and zines available on the shop.
Now it feels like a natural reset. A reminder of where my photography comes from: instinct, tension, curiosity, and a bit of trouble. At the same time I feel that my experience now helps me more. I felt that sometimes the visual speech was too much, burning details and going towards abstract. I don’t want to repeat those errors.
I’m not declaring a new phase. I’m just enjoying this return to a raw, brutal, monochrome language. And as long as it feels true, I’ll stay here. With the Canon M200 in one hand and the Sony A6000 in the other, both set to give me the kind of JPEGs that don’t lie.
