Black & White Film

While years ago color was the preferred viewing mechanism for any kind of film, today black & white film has become a bit of a preference for certain occasions, making certain photographs appear more classic, romantic, wistful, and any number of other daydream style adjectives. Why is it that black and white film seems appear classier than color film, and how does it really differ from color film?

If you look back at the romanticism of old black and white films, it becomes more obvious why people choose to have certain prints – portraits, wedding photos, and even landscapes – developed in black and white. There has always been something about the appearance of these images that leads people to decide that processing black and white film is worth the extra expense.

For a short time, 120 black & white film was made popular after its invention for the Kodak Brownie camera in 1901. However, this film format was soon superseded by the 135 format that became standard after 1934. From this, 35mm film was developed and became a standard, with 110 and other formats breaking in from time to time. During all of this the popularity f color film began to overrule the need for black and white film, and the production of the latter slowed almost to a stop.

35mm black & white film regained popularity for its effect of making certain types of photos take on a more picturesque and even movie-like appearance. For a time, people began taking certain color exposure and requesting that they be redeveloped as black and white photos, leading to the increased production of 35 mm black and white film. In fact, for a time, the Kodak Advantix black and white film was a huge seller, allowing people to shoot fanciful images in regular, HD, or panoramic configuration.

One of the great things these days about using this type of film is that developing black and white photographic film no longer requires finding a black and white film outlet. Consumers can count on standard film processing locations to handle their black and white imaging needs. With services provided by Kodak, black and white film developing can be accomplished with one-hour photo processing labs in most stores.

In society, many things tend to evolve in circles, and when it comes to preferences in photo processing, it seems that society may be circling back around to its original format, preferring black and white photography to color.