Black & White is still Beautiful

The photo above was taken with my 35mm all manual camera through the 50mm, f1.7 prime lens using Kodak Tri-X (400 ISO) black & white film and processed by The Darkroom. The exposure setting was f8, 1/125, and the ISO of course, was 400.

The one below (also shown in an earlier post) was taken with the Pentax K-01 digital camera at f3.5, 1/160, and ISO at 100, and then cropped slightly and converted to black & white in post processing.

Whether you prefer the high contrast and grain of the film version or the slick high res look of the digital version the stark reality of black and white holds an undeniable attraction. This is ironic since our everyday world is of course, in color. It’s more than a little odd that the ubiquitous color of the real world should prove at times so distracting that a black & white image actuality ends up doing a better job depicting reality.

I hope to revisit this topic again after I have experimented with some slower, less grainy black & white film. I have a roll of the now discontinued Kodak Plus-X (once my favorite slow speed B&W film) that should do nicely.

I also want to “play” with some Kodak BW400 film which is a black &white film that uses standard C-41 processing and therefore can be processed right along with color film. The advantage here is that if you have a local lab still developing color negative film they can handle this black & white film for you too. Most other black & white film requires a special processing that only a few labs still offer and usually at greater expense.

While I’m on the black & white kick I want to experiment with the “in camera” black & white filters & special effects available in the Pentax K-01 and the Nikon P-300 too. To me this would be preferable to changing things to black & white in post processing. In any case hang in there, you can expect some more posts on the subject of black & white to be forth coming.