Pre-Digital Photographic Technology

Black and white roll film

  The pre-digital photographic technology I researched was black, and white roll film. Black and white roll film affected photojournalism and journalists. According to the NYIP staff  “Even in the past fifty years,there have been lots of reasons to use black-and-white film. Early color film,processing and printing was expensive.” 

  Bob Capa's photos of D-Day are among famous black and white photo's that were taken in the black and white era John Morris said "Capa's D-Day photos have become classics" . One of his photo's in my previous blogs is very powerful. Even though the image is very dark and the quality is not there, the photo's are amazing. According to John Morris "A darkroom technician was almost as anxious to see the invasion images as Capa himself. In his haste, the technician dried the film too quickly. The excess heat melted the emulsion on all but 10 of the frames. Those that remained were blurred, surreal shots, which succinctly conveyed the chaos and confusion of the day."

Robert Vaux said, “Movies started out in black and white, and for the first few decades of their existence were produced entirely in that form.” Photojournalists used the tools of the trade and what they had, back in the day. What I mean is with the technology they had they still created beautiful images. Below I have a photo I found of a young boy sledding in the 1950’s. I notice the image is in black and white but isn’t very crisp and the facial details are not as crisp as todays photo’s. 

photo by: Rights Managed Stock footage
http://footage.framepool.com/en/shot/889954029-luging-sleigh-slope-landscape-playing

Last week I went outside to shovel all that snow that fell, and decided to take a photo of the snow on my dads and my car. I used the black and white photo filter on my IPhone 6’s camera. This image which is below the one of the boy is very crisp and clear. The image of the boy seems very dark and the snow is gray whereas the picture below the black is bright and the white is well defined. Though i still adore the older photo because of its vintage. It is very old and seems like a better photo. My photo although crisp just looks to professional and fake to me, the black and white setting is not "rustic" i guess is the word. My photo was capture in seconds and was on my computer in less than a minute. The image above probably had to be taken to a lab after the entire film was used up and developed which could've taken hours if not days.