@DaveFromCampbelltown It is a different art, for sure. Only a very, very small handful of very expensive digital cameras actually capture in monochrome with no color filter array - certain Leica and Phase One models come to mind. Most digital black and white images, including every single one from an iPhone, are converted from color to b&w in reality. You are just accepting the defaults of the manufacturer of what they think a good color-converted b&w image is and not applying your own judgement in post processing. Any of the great film b&w photographers did extensive darkroom work (post processing). If your goal is to show images, like yours, which are shot with a b&w filter on a color image using a color camera, iPhone or otherwise, you can clarify. Otherwise, just allow all comers for b&w images. It is a good subject and it takes skill to pull off, so I love it. I just think you are being too limiting. My 2 cents.
One of my ancient Kodak DSLRs is B&W also, but it's a pretty limited and not great CCD.
In any case, a little bit of pre-history on B&W:
In the early days, silver halide salts really only would "see" UV to blue spectrum light. This was called "normal" sensitivity, and it's part of what made very old photos have a distinctive look. Wet plate practitioners still get this. I also have some "normal sensitivity" "dry plates" around here that I bought from a guy who was making them in his basement(literally) but gave up after I was having trouble getting the exposure good and my one plate holder sort of fell apart.
Along the way came "Orthochromatic" film, which modified some of the silver halide salts to be sensitive roughly down to the green range of the spectrum. This brought with it its own look, and is responsible for a lot of the distinctive look of 1920s-1950s photography. In particular it renders(caucasian) skin tones and lips in a distinctive way that can give portraits what's often called the "Hollywood look". It also renders skies and foliage a distinctive way. Orthochromatic film is still available. It never really died as it was the choice for high contrast technical film(used for things like making offset printing plates) and now Ilford sells it as 35mm and 120 film in addition to sheet film. I have shot the Ilford version packaged as technical film, as well as the discontinued Kodak version of it, along with Ilford's current "Ortho Plus." They are not easy films to tame as they inherently are very high contrast, although older ortho films were not so much that way.
Finally, along came "Panochromatic" films, which are sensitive down into the red region. By the 1950s, these were basically the only ones in common use, and some film stock still appends "pan" to the name of them. These have their own look, but of course it's also what most people associate with B&W film now. Pan films are very much general purpose films, but it's also common to use them with various colored filters to adjust the sensitivity. A classic one is that pan films tend to render skies light and featureless. A light yellow filter will darken the sky a bit and show clouds, while going all the way to a deep red filter will give a jet-black sky still with white clouds. The use of filters is effectively before-shooting manipulation.
All films have a certain characteristic sensitivity curve, though, and many experience B&W photographers just stick to one film stock because they know it well, or otherwise will tailor film stock to certain situations. One of the big ones is in red sensitivity, where, for example, Fuji Across is less red sensitive than something like Kodak Tri-X, whereas Rolleipan 400 extends its sensitivity so much that it can be used as a pseudo-IR film(although nowhere near as red-sensitive as Kodak HIE).
When you convert a digital original to B&W, often it's desireable to emulate a certain film stock. There are very good plug-ins that do it automatically, or you can do it manually using something like the Photoshop channel mixer tool. Using the B&W setting on your cameras throws away your ability to do this in post-it's like just popping a roll of Tri-X in your camera and shooting away without thinking about it.
