Black and White film is obsolete - here is why [Archive]

roofguy

04-05-2002, 01:56 PM

Black & white film and paper will outlive color film by a thousand years. The digital revolution will destroy all color film within 25 years, but b&w will live on... 
...because people can do it all at home. 
 
The question of whether digital b&w images should be shot in b&w or color, all things being equal, is different. They should be shot in color. 
 
Also consider sepia toning, way easy in PS once you get the basic technique explained. 
 
Regarding negatives: I've had limited success, but I do have a list of things yet to explore, such as "soak the negative in oil". The basic limitation I've not overcome is the lack of density in a paper negative. Have you tried it?

Nick_k

04-05-2002, 04:32 PM

Great, so next time I'm taking pictures at a show in a dark, smoky bar without a flash, I'll leave the Neopan at home and just use slide film. After all, there is plenty of slide film that pushes easily to 6400 and costs less than $3 per roll, right? And next time I'm out taking pictures, I'll assume that I'll get it "wrong" or that I might forget what filter I'm using, and use color slide film just in case! Never again will I be a slave to my own visualizations! After all, color film doesn't require filtering and isn't affected by exposure technique.

Brendan

04-05-2002, 05:43 PM

Most of your pictures are Amazing! I like learning in real B&W since I can develop at home, and print away all I want for much less than sending my slides out to get processed and mounted, then spend more time scanning and tweeking in Photoshop than I would developing and printing in B&W. I do think B&W will be around much longer than slides once digital really catches up and drops in price.

NJMurphy

04-05-2002, 08:32 PM

Well, Robert, you should give that insight to Kodak, Agfa, Fuji and Ilford, not to mention Forte and anyone else who manufactures black and white film, paper and/or chemistry. 
 
I'm sure their stockholders won't want their companies pursuing such ''obsolete'markets anymore! 
 
If you need me, I'll be in my darkroom.

elpendejoloco

04-06-2002, 12:52 AM

You actually paid money to go to Hawaii? 
 
No wonder you think B&W is obsolete!

Gochugogi

04-06-2002, 02:27 AM

Yeah, I'd never pay money to go to Hawaii. I'm trying to figure out how to get off this rock (Oahu, the gathering place of many cars). 
 
Plenty ''o folks said radio was obsolete when TV came along. As I recall color film replaced black and white in the early 1970s in the mass market, but is alive and kickin'' 30 years later in student, fine art and hobby photography. Heck, Kodak even has a Black and White Advantix (APS). 
 
Long after my CD-ROMs have deteriorated, my hard drives have crashed and my color negs and chromes have faded, my black and white images will live on. Heck, I have family photos from the 1920s and onward that look wonderful. My black and white negs from the late 1960s and early 1970s are still clean and printable. In contrast, many of my color photos and negs from the 1970s and 80s ain't nearly as well preserved. My Epson Photo inkjet prints made in 1996 have disappeared (nice glossy paper--I wonder if I can reuse it in my printer?). 
 
When I shoot black and white, I previsualize the image in shades of white, gray and black. I use red or yellow filters and/or a polarizer to help differentiate tones. Moreover, I look at form and texture differently than when I shoot color. Shooting color and desaturating it after the fact is inelegant and counterintuitive. Besides, black and white emulsions are often finer grained than color. 
 
My Hawaiian Photo Galleries: 
 
<A HREF=http://alaike.lcc.hawaii.edu/frary/photo_index.htm" TARGET='_blank'>http://alaike.lcc.hawaii.edu/frary/photo_index.htm</A> 
 
Aloha, Gochugogi

NJMurphy

04-06-2002, 09:34 AM

A few years ago I printed some negatives my father made back in the 1930's, ''40's and ''50's. 
 
Yet the company I once worked for (and, I'm sure, hundreds of others) has thousands of images on mag tapes from the late 1980's with no hardware to read them, much less any filmsetter that could output them. 
 
In another thread I said I would consider digital to be a viable form when I could put a flashcard in my Beseler 23C and produce a double-weight fiber-base print from it.

robertdfeinman

04-06-2002, 10:15 AM

There has been some confusion about what the channel techniques do so I added an additional column of examples using a step wedge to give a better illustration. 
 
So far only two valid counterarguments have been given: 
1. Greater tonal range (but I admitted that from the start - use color negative film instead) 
2. B&W film will last longer. True, but who is really going to want to look at your stuff 100 years from now? Anyway well produced digital prints will last as long as silver-based.

Viper

04-06-2002, 11:02 AM

On the general topic of digital: 
 
Both film and digital are widely used in all professional areas. Digital is still way overpriced to make it viable over a film camera/scanner combo for the average shooter. The common sense person on any type of budget restriction should hold off for a year or two if planning on purchasing a top line digital SLR. 
 
Reason for this: 
 
The race to this point has been to find acceptable resoloution in digtal cameras. 5-6 megapixels now serves the majority of both consumer and professional needs. From this point on it is my belief the market will stabilise and the point of focus will go to other areas to make digital SLR's cheaper and more workable. The race for resoloution I believe will slow from this point and some of the restrictions of going digital will now be attended too.

Nick_k

04-06-2002, 12:22 PM

There are points that you missed. 
1.) Film speed is a real issue. If what you meant to say is that "black and white film is obsolete for landscape photography" you might have more of a point, although I would still disagree with you. 
2.) Previsualization vs. Postvisualization. For myself, and I assume a lot of other people here, part of the allure is photography is creating as we are viewing. Certainly we will spend the time in the dark room to make sure that our prints are as good as possible, and even make large changes to our images like cropping and contrast enhancement, but it is all done to bring out the picture that we saw before we released the shutter. The goal is not to give ourselves the widest margin of error when taking the picture, but to ensure that the final result reflects our thoughts at the time. I could take a negative with every filter in my bag, bracketing three stops each, but that's not what I want. 
3.) Elegance of the process. To blithely suggest that the black and white process is dead because I can take a slide, have it developed, scan it, remove the colors I don't want in Photoshop, convert it to black and white, invert it, print it out onto a transparency, and then make a contact print and be better off than chosing a proper filter, developing the film and printing it directly from an enlarger is mind-numbingly counterintuitive. Not only is the process more time consuming, your print is a fourth generation image. 
4.) You can't suggest that something people take as personally and relate to as intimately as black and white photography is obsolete just because there are other ways of achieving the a similar effect without those people objecting. Besides, its popularity has actually been seeing a resurgence recently, so it's far from obsolete.

graphics12

04-06-2002, 12:33 PM

Robert, you leave me confused. What exactly are you trying to say here. 
 
First you state 
"B&W film will last longer. True" 
 
Then you state 
"Anyway well produced digital prints will last as long as silver-based." 
 
Which is it, will traditional b&w outlast digi prints or will digi outlast traditional b&w. 
 
I agre with the other posters but none more than Brendan. You should have presented this as a Photoshop technique rather than flatly stating that traditional b&w is obsolete.

Gochugogi

04-06-2002, 05:12 PM

Robert D. Feinman writes, "B&W film will last longer. True, but who is really going to want to look at your stuff 100 years from now?" 
 
There are always images of artistic or historical value that many people wish to view a century after the exposure. Moreover, just plain folks will treasure portraits and candids of family members 100 years hence. I have dozens of prints from the 1920s of loved ones that have since passed on. Yes, we still view use them to draw out memories from the elder clan members. 
 
Aloha, Gochugogi

thebreeze

04-06-2002, 07:52 PM

Black & white film obsolete? I think not. There will allways be a place for it. Not just with the darkroom people but for certain moods that cry out for b&w instead of color. Ansel Adams and many of the other masters worked with b&w and you have to float a loan to own one of their original prints. Bottom line is b&w has a certain mystique be it photos or movies. Somehow Curley, Moe, and Larry wouldn't be the same in living color.

drh681

04-07-2002, 11:23 PM

add to list of why Bw film will not die; 
 
You can see the developed image with no mechanical devices required. 
 
the standard issue, mark I eyeball will not be superseded or obsoleted. 
 
if you want people far into the future to be able to look at your images, Archival hard copy stored properly is the way to go. 
 
eg. estar based silverhalide film 
 
as for the technique, /ibb/skins/default/emoticons/cool.gif 
a couple of years ago I read of some one producing a set of orange/red inks to make digital negatives for contact printing, I guess the idea was to give more transparency to the neg for greater tone control. 
makes me wonder if you could load a multi-tank printer with all yellow and magenta tanks.

Brandon Nightingale

04-08-2002, 12:27 AM

One thing that digital definitly doesn't have, FUN! I don't know about you, but I don't get turned on much by sitting at a computer shoving film in a scanner (or memory card in a slot) and moving the mouse around for an hour. I can't image something so boring. Unfortunetely, I still do it, but only for yearbook purposes. On the other hand, spending a couple of hours in the darkroom printing photos, listening to music, talking with friends (or myself) and getting away with acting crazy is a blast! It is so fun to work on a picture you just absolutely love for like an hour, developing more test strips than you can count, dodging and burning, and then sticking your last print in the developer, and watching it magically appear. You just get this rush (I usually end up jumping up and down) and you just want to throw it in the stop bath before it gets over developed. There is no comparison! So, digital definitly looses there. 
 
The major quality difference between B&W and any other medium is tonality. There is no way you can stick a color neg in a B&W enlarger and get the same creamy tones of an original B&W. You can't scan in a slide or neg and hit the little greyscale button and have the same tone of B&W, same with a CCD. Hand me a roll of Delta 100, or even better, Neopan Acros 100, and I'll take pictures that will blow away color and digital. 
 
Another MAJOR difference is how long B&W lasts. Heck, we even have the very first picture even made, from the 1830's/40's!!! Yet, my grandpa's color slides from 10 or more years ago are fading badly. Just look at the pictures from the depression, or the slums in the 1890's, or WWI/WWII, and tell me that no one looks at pictures a hundred years later! Please, for all we know the magnetic strips that memory is held on could fade in 50 years, we'll just have to find out. 
 
Of course there is always cost. Tomorrow I can go to the photo shop and buy a roll of the finest grain B&W ISO 100 film ever made, for $3!!! The equivilant in color and slide film is much more, Kodak Max has nothing on B&W! Chemicals and paper are also cheap if you do a lot of printing, much cheaper than going to a lab and trusting them to do everything just as you want it, heck, just having film pushed usually costs extra! 
 
Well, like I said, I could continue for a year or so, but I'm tired, so I'll stop now. I hope you get my point.

danag42

04-08-2002, 10:41 AM

Black and white can be printed on archival paper with archival techniques, it is possibly less expensive than archival color. 
 
There is at least one color printer that will produce archival color prints (but it preforms poorly with black and white). 
 
So for those that want archival black and white, a darkroom is currently the way to go. 
 
For those that want archival color, the Epson 2000P is the method of choice. 
 
If an image is so valuable that future generations will want to preserve it, it will be transfered to whatever medium they have for their time. Just like we do with valuable old images. 
 
So this whole discussion is sort of pointless, don't you think? 
 
 
/ibb/skins/default/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

Moderator

04-08-2002, 10:56 AM

Gentle readers, 
 
One of the few things that gets the moderator to edit posts on these forums is personal attacks among participants. Lively debate as we've seen in this thread is fine, but when things devolve to personal insults, that's not acceptable here and will be deleted. There were several such attacks in this thread. Those attacks and the responses and references to them have been removed. 
 
Thanks for your cooperation. 
 
Your friendly neighborhood moderator.

robertdfeinman

04-08-2002, 12:02 PM

Because of some confusion about what using channels in photoshop does I've added an additional column of examples using step wedges to my original tip. 
 
Many people have assumed that I am promoting inkjet prints, but this is not so. I myself still make conventional b&w prints even though I use an inkjet printer for color. I haven't been able to get the gradiations from the inkjet yet. Part of the problem is capturing the limited tonal range of a b&w negative with my present scanner. I have another tip for this, but I don't feel it's still ideal. 
 
For the pages look under my photographic tips heading 
at: 
 
<A HREF=http://robertdfeinman.com" TARGET='_blank'>Robert D Feinman</A>

2cpu

04-08-2002, 11:23 PM

Ansel Adams shot in color--he only printed in B&W. In any case, when I used to shoot in B&W, it was because it was sharper than the color film. It had very distinct "snap" to the prints that only were seen with larger format cameras in color. I strongly disagree that digital will not replace film. Now I have never owned a digital camera--I was waiting for the price of 12 megapixels to be reasonable. Well the Foveon chip will do it. For your own tests, download their images from <A HREF=http://www.foveon.com" TARGET='_blank'>www.foveon.com</A> and print them. You can make up your own mind. That is a 3 meg chip. No I don't work for the company. I will try to buy some stock though. PS. All my b&w negatives are scratched even though I handle them with gloves and by the edges. Digital ICE cannot eliminate that. Slide film is more resistant to scratches.

Nick_k

04-09-2002, 12:51 AM

quote:Originally posted by 2cpu: 
Ansel Adams shot in color--he only printed in B&W. 
 
 
EH??????

NJMurphy

04-09-2002, 12:58 AM

Yeah, I'd like to see the citation on that as well.

RecycledFunk

04-09-2002, 02:56 AM

I'm one of those strange techy/old school hybrids. I must have the state of the art when it comes to my computer, stereo and other misc. electronic equipment and spend exorborant amounts of time online. I do more shopping online then I seem to do at Wal-mart. I work in a bank but all my personal banking is done electronically. I LOVE tech! However, I still make my photos with an "old fashioned" manual-focus Minolta x700 and a roll of B & W film. Sure, it's got some bells and whistles but it's not nearly as techy as some of the high-end (and low-end) digi cameras out there. 
 
And do you know what my favorite thing to do on a nasty rainy day is? Seal myself up in my rinky-**** darkroom/storage room/weight room and print away! It's so cramped that my fixer sits on the weight bench. I know I make the house stink every time I mix up the fixer to the point that I've come close to getting booted out. And I throw out more enlargements than I hang on my walls. But I wouldn't give up my ancient Prinz Deluxe enlarger that looks alarmingly like a Kitchen-Aide mixer for anything. It's my baby. 
 
So when you say that B & W film is obsolete it makes me wonder. Perhaps times are coming when my compy will make me shake the monitor to develope my enlargements. Or perhaps they'll make a keyboard that stains my shirts when I forget to put on my apron. Or perhaps someday my mom will threaten to kick me out for leaving the computer on and "stinking up the whole dang house!" 
 
Until then, please knock before coming in to use the darkroom/storage room/weightroom. 
 
 
(Wow...that's a lot of run-on sentences)

drh681

04-09-2002, 06:50 AM

it's that word, OBSOLETE it makes people do crazy things. 
 
repeat after me, 
 
I do here and now promise to never declare any photograpic process, material, or apparatus to be... well you know, the ''O'word. /ibb/skins/default/emoticons/biggrin.gif

NJMurphy

04-09-2002, 09:44 AM

2cpu: 
 
We're still waiting for the citation about Ansel Adams shooting in color...

graphics12

04-09-2002, 01:01 PM

Water Man I am sure that Ansel Adams played with color an many occasions (no I do not have proof) but he was by all accounts continually on the look out for the best method to achieve his visions, why would he not try color and even use it to make b&w prints. Did he use color and print b&w for all his images, I do not believe that and like you will need to see proof. 
My own experiments with using color slides/negs to get b&w prints have turned up some interesting images but nothing that can compare to using good b&w film to start with.

NJMurphy

04-09-2002, 01:33 PM

From what little I know about the Zone System, it was formulated for black and white negative film. 
 
2cpu is making what reads to be an absolute statment that Adams used nothing but color film. 
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><TABLE BORDER=1><TR><TD>quote:Ansel Adams shot in color--he only printed in B&W.</TD></TR></TABLE></BLOCKQUOTE> 
 
Which is nonsense! It makes about as much sense as saying that B/W film is obsolete, merely because one person has some ideas about using Photoshop to ''replace'it. 
 
Yes, with the proper filtration you can print color negs on B/W paper, but I don't think any of Ansel Adams'well-known work was made in such a fashion.

zapp

04-10-2002, 07:11 PM

quote:Originally posted by robertdfeinman: 
Because of some confusion about what using channels in photoshop does I've added an additional column of examples using step wedges to my original tip. 
 
Many people have assumed that I am promoting inkjet prints, but this is not so. I myself still make conventional b&w prints even though I use an inkjet printer for color. I haven't been able to get the gradiations from the inkjet yet. Part of the problem is capturing the limited tonal range of a b&w negative with my present scanner. I have another tip for this, but I don't feel it's still ideal. 
 
For the pages look under my photographic tips heading 
at: 
 
<A HREF=http://robertdfeinman.com" TARGET='_blank'>Robert D Feinman</A> 
 
If you have some opinion or something to dicuss, place it here and not on your page so we can look it up, I am not putting my answers on my homepage so you can look up what I think of your post.

2cpu

04-16-2002, 12:05 AM

There is a book with Ansel Adams prints all in color--the same prints we know in black and white. I have a copy of it. Amazon .com has it Ansel Adams in Color--author is ansel adams and harry callahan, Oct 1993. It explains the details. He used Kodachrome according to his book.

NJMurphy

04-16-2002, 01:04 AM

Looking through the description of the book, I concede that Adams may have shot in color, however, your post insinuates that the black and white pictures of his that we are all familiar with were originally shot on color film and printed by him in black and white, which is not the case. These are images he shot on Kodachrome, as you mention. There is no mention that he printed any of these, either in color or in B/W. 
 
This is a ''dead horse'topic, and I'm not responding to any more from it. 
 
Good night.

alienator

04-16-2002, 03:19 AM

Mr. Adams admitted to dabbling in color, but he felt that he never really got it, that he didn't succeed with it. His color pics, I think are interesting, but not of the magnitude of his black and white prints which were made from black and white negs. 
 
Of course, this could be one of the greatest coverups of all time, right up there with the faking of the moon landing in an IHOP in Gary, Indiana......or it just could be an assertion made way out of context....

JOwens

04-16-2002, 02:28 PM

Reminds me of the story of the movement to close the US Patent office in the 1890's because "There is nothing left to invent". Can anybody verify that this statement was actually made? Anyway, this thread reminds me of that story.

graphics12

04-17-2002, 11:49 AM

JOwens the answer is yes, the administration at the time wanted to close the patent office as a cost savings measure believing it was no longer neccesary since everything that could be invented already had been.

Meadnotkin

09-07-2005, 05:51 PM

What's the difference between black and white and color photography? Just thought I'd bring some levity to the Adams discussion.

Landscaper, too

09-07-2005, 06:11 PM

Date: 4/6/2002 9:02:00 AM 
Author: Viper 
From this point on it is my belief the market will stabilise and the point of focus will go to other areas to make digital SLR's cheaper and more workable. The race for resoloution I believe will slow from this point and some of the restrictions of going digital will now be attended too. 
 
Yeah, go tell this to all those folks lining up to get their new Canon 5D.

ronk

09-07-2005, 07:00 PM

I remember seeing a book entitled "Ansel Adams in Color" at the bargain table of the book store several years ago. Adams also had a contract with Poloroid, don't know if any of it was in color though.

drh681

09-07-2005, 10:19 PM

well, a blast from the past.

NJMurphy

09-08-2005, 12:06 AM

Date: 4/5/2002 6:32:00 PM 
Author: The Water-Method Man 
Well, Robert, you should give that insight to Kodak, Agfa, Fuji and Ilford, not to mention Forte and anyone else who manufactures black and white film, paper and/or chemistry. 
 
I'm sure their stockholders won't want their companies pursuing such ''obsolete'markets anymore! 
 
If you need me, I'll be in my darkroom. 
 
 
Date: 4/6/2002 7:34:00 AM 
Author: The Water-Method Man 
In another thread I said I would consider digital to be a viable form when I could put a flashcard in my Beseler 23C and produce a double-weight fiber-base print from it. 
 
 
Oooooh, this thread is SO embarrassing!

AstroImager

09-08-2005, 12:58 AM

Hmm, what an outrageous, *wrong* subject title :) 
 
I'm as much of a techno-geek as there is. A hopeless advocate for digital, a firm disbeliever in the notion that color film will be around for a long time. Right at the forefront of the "put away your horse and buggy and get with the digital program" crowd. 
 
HOWEVER...there is nothing -- NOTHING -- better in this world than a really fine black and white film negative, and the print that comes from it when done with skill and artistry. Digital (and that includes scanned slides) doesn't (yet?) come close to the tonal range and depth that a beautiful black and white print has. Though I've seen an awful lot of very fine color photography (and hopefully done some myself), the finest photographs I've ever seen were all black and white prints made from a gorgeous, perfectly-exposed negative and then printed by somebody who knows what they're doing. 
 
You've got some awfully nice stuff, and some very cool techniques. But B&W film is far from dead -- as long as people care about absolute quality and the unique, gorgeous look that you get from it, it'll be around. At least until digital can make better prints...! ;-) 
 
Paul

drh681

09-08-2005, 04:58 AM

Date: 9/7/2005 10:06:44 PM 
Author: The Water-Method Man 
Oooooh, this thread is SO embarrassing! 
 
so who has a working crystal ball?

AndyK

09-08-2005, 11:18 AM

drh681>so who has a working crystal ball? 
 
I occasionally send e-mails for co-workers with my "standard" disclaimer. Feel free to use this if it would serve your purposes. -Andy 
 
 
DISCLAIMER: My crystal ball is cloudy at times, heck, it's 
been sent back to the manufacturer more times than I can 
remember (I also failed to tell them I have dropped it on 
at least two occasions and it has a small crack). Your 
mileage may vary, void where prohibited, all rules apply, 
you must be a legal resident of the state, not sold to 
minors, long haired freaky people need not apply, etc.

robertdfeinman

09-12-2005, 11:50 AM

Well it is interesting to see this thread revived after a long sleep. 
 
Several points: 
1. The title was meant to be a bit provacative in order to get people to examine the issue. If you like B&W use it 
 
2. The main point was that with a color original you can do things like apply filters after the film has been exposed. That is what the tip tried to show. 
 
3. Someone commented on B&W negative vs the color transparency I used in the original tip. I think this is a valid point, that is why I have now switched to using color negative film exclusively. I now get the latitude and fine grain as well as the multiple channels of color data. 
 
4. It can be mathematically shown (I do it in another tip for a different purpose) that by applying the appropriate curve it is possible to match the tonal response of any B&W film. All that needs to be done is to ensure the color negative is properly exposed. By use of the channel mixer it is also possible to copy the color sensitivity of the any B&W film as well. 
 
5. I think that modern color negative films are probably as fine grain as B&W, although there may be some special cases. I'm not sure about resolution, B&W may still have an edge. 
 
6. One minor trend that has started is for people to make tonal adjustments in photoshop and then print the image on clear film to make a "digital" negative. This is then contact printed on enlarging paper giving the best of both worlds. Flexible tonal adjustments, not easily done with conventional processing, and the "look" of silver prints. 
 
7. There have been tremendous strides made in the past four years in inkjet B&W printing. With the variety of surfaces and ink colors now produced there is a "look" for almost everyone. The annual Photo Expo is coming in October to NYC. If you get the chance visit and look at some of the displays of B&W prints and see for yourself.