Types of film | Colour and monochrome
Types of film | Colour and monochrome | ||
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There are two types film for photography in colour or monochrome, which is black and white. Visually it is much easier to shoot colour than black and white, because the result more closely resembles the way the subject looked in the viewfinder. You must allow for differences between how something looks and how it comes out in a colour photograph, of course. But this is generally less difficult than forecasting how subject colours will translate into tones of monochrome. At its best, black and white photography is considered more interpretative and subtle, less crudely life like than colour. For this reason it has become a minority enthusiasts' medium, still important for 'fine prints' and gallery shows. Here it readily rubs shoulders with black and white photography of the past. Colour films, papers and chemical processes are more complex than black and white. This is why it was almost a hundred years after the invention of photography before reliable colour print processes appeared. Even then they were expensive and laborious to use, so that until the 1970s photographers mostly learnt their craft in black and white and worked up to colour. Today practically everyone takes their first pictures in colour. Most of the chemical complexity of colour photography is locked up in the manufacturers' films, papers, ready mixed solutions and standardized processing routines. It is mainly in printing that colour remains more demanding than black and white, because of the extra requirements of judging and controlling colour balance. So in the darkroom at least you will find that photography by the chemical route is still best begun in black and white. | ||