Vintage Erotica Forums - View Single Post - Demsal8's Colorized B/W Pictures For You!

**demsal8** · May 26th, 2010, 03:26 AM

While we're waiting for something else to come up, I'd like to weigh in on the colorizing debate. Yes, many times artists/photographers/directors chose to make their medium in black and white, and I respect those choices. However, you need to realize that choice was not always available. Before the 1930's, there was no such thing as color film. Even when color became available, it was not used because of the expense, it was a lot more costly than b&w. During the 40's, 50's and 60's, most magazines that would publish nudes (and many others like 'Life') were b&w. A photographer who was a businessman chose to reduce his cost since the finished product was going to be monochrome anyway.
Another reason for chosing b&w over color was the range of the film. Color film would only show clearly one f-stop above and below the setting of the camera while b&w would provide discrimination to plus and minus 3 stops. If you're shooting in the sun, with well lit areas and very dark shadows, b&w was the medium of choice; you could see thing in the picture which color film would not capture. So often, the use of b&w was a technical limitation, one of necessity.
I remember reading one time that color films were offered during the very early 1900's. Their production was as a plain b&w, then someone sat down and colorized each frame of the film individually, and had to do so for many copies of the film. Despite the obvious expense, these films made money because people would pay a premium to see them.
I have colored some old family pictures including one of my great-grandmother which was probably taken around 1890, and my family loves it My mother, who died last year in her 90's enjoyed seeing the old pictures renewed in color.

May 26th, 2010, 03:26 AM	#28
demsal8 R.I.P Join Date: May 2010 Location: Texas, USA Posts: 1,809 Thanks: 27,402 Thanked 33,222 Times in 1,807 Posts	Colorizing debate While we're waiting for something else to come up, I'd like to weigh in on the colorizing debate. Yes, many times artists/photographers/directors chose to make their medium in black and white, and I respect those choices. However, you need to realize that choice was not always available. Before the 1930's, there was no such thing as color film. Even when color became available, it was not used because of the expense, it was a lot more costly than b&w. During the 40's, 50's and 60's, most magazines that would publish nudes (and many others like 'Life') were b&w. A photographer who was a businessman chose to reduce his cost since the finished product was going to be monochrome anyway. Another reason for chosing b&w over color was the range of the film. Color film would only show clearly one f-stop above and below the setting of the camera while b&w would provide discrimination to plus and minus 3 stops. If you're shooting in the sun, with well lit areas and very dark shadows, b&w was the medium of choice; you could see thing in the picture which color film would not capture. So often, the use of b&w was a technical limitation, one of necessity. I remember reading one time that color films were offered during the very early 1900's. Their production was as a plain b&w, then someone sat down and colorized each frame of the film individually, and had to do so for many copies of the film. Despite the obvious expense, these films made money because people would pay a premium to see them. I have colored some old family pictures including one of my great-grandmother which was probably taken around 1890, and my family loves it My mother, who died last year in her 90's enjoyed seeing the old pictures renewed in color.