Into The Deep: Starting Out With Black and White Photography

All photography was originally monochrome, most of these photographs were black-and-white. Even after color film was readily available, black-and-white photography continued to dominate for decades, due to its lower cost and its "classic" photographic look. It is important to note that some monochromatic pictures are not always pure blacks and whites, but also contain other hues depending on the process. The Cyanotype process produces an image of blue and white for example. The albumen process which was used more than 150 years ago had brown tones.

Many photographers continue to produce some monochrome images. Some full color digital images are processed using a variety of techniques to create black and whites, and some cameras have even been produced to exclusively shoot monochrome.

Black and white photographers today are divided into two schools - the film purists, enthusiasts who still uses film cameras and black and white films, and the modern day digital photographers. While not many new film cameras are manufactured nowadays, these purists tend to go for the vintage and collectible types. While some are using mechanical Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, Pentax and other of the 1960 eras, other are equally adapt with the medium format 120 film cameras.

Film camera purists will tend to look for the following type films for their image capture:

• Kodak BW 400CN, T-Max 100, T-Max 400, T-Max 3200, Plus-X (125), Tri-X (400)
• Ilford Pan F Plus (50), FP4 Plus (125), HP5 Plus (400), Delta 100 Pro, Delta 400 Pro, Delta 3200
• Fuji Neopan 100 Acros, Neopan 400, Neopan 1600

Digitalist, on the other hand, can rely on their present digital SLR types used in black-and-white image capture mood or use it in conjunction with their photo post-processing software.

New on the market are the latest offering, for example, from Olympus which now offers Art Filters and other adaptations type gizmos in-built into the camera bodies and camera management software that is targeted towards more creativity while using the camera itself rather than relying post-process factors in thee image making. This could be a trend worth watching.

The recommended reading list below includes references for both image making schools.