Black & White Film

Originally all photography started out as black and white film photography, also called monochrome photography. Black and white films have always been very attractive to the consumer even after the introduction of color photography because of its classical photography roots. For the longest time black and white films have also been lower in cost for development.

While years ago at the beginning of photography black and white film outlets might have existed at every corner, nowadays black and white film is only an outlet for art expressions.

Certain film sizes and speed in black and white film are still produced. Black and white comes as the standard size 35mm black & white film, as 120 black and white film and even as Advantix black and white film, the APS format from Kodak. But just as with color film, 35mm black and white film was the most used film on the market.

Developing black and white photographic film does not need many fancy accessories and the process itself is not very hard. But the fact that black and white pictures just as well as many other pictures need to be developed in total darkness up to a certain point of the development process makes it somewhat difficult. That is why the room used for processing black and white film is called darkroom. Kodak offers a good amount of black and white film developing materials as well as tips for the hobbyist and professional.
In our modern world black & white film is rarely used due to the popularity of color pictures as well as digital photography. In digital photography using the colored picture file and one of the photo software gives you the ability to produce a black and white picture from you colored file in seconds and this black and white picture file then can be send to one of the labs either online or a the store for picture prints. Some companies even offer a monochromatic digital camera that will only take black and white pictures.
Professional photographers and professionally done portraits are often still in black and white. Black and white pictures still have a certain attraction and sophistication that a colored photo does not. Lots of artists also use black and white in their photography and if you have ever browsed through calendars available on the market you will see that several of these do have artistic black and white photography on their pages.