Black and white film remained popular for decades after color film because it had different properties and could be easier to work with. Some photographers also preferred the aesthetic. Before digital photography became as good as film, B&W continued to be used in professional photography.
At least this is somewhat more excusable since newspapers were still mostly using B&W. The color photos would have been for the weekly or monthly news magazines which were using color.
It’s not film, but the Apple II (1971) used a monochromatic display or something for technical reasons. I’m trying to find the quote but unfortunately I can’t so this is from memory. It was something like going with black and white allowed them a better frame rate/resolution over color (and for cheaper).
It’s possible similar tradeoffs existed for monochromatic film into the '90s.
The Apple II’s big selling point, compared to the other two big brands introduced in 1977 (the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Commodore PET) was colour.
But it was a weird and colour scheme that took advantage of clever Wozniak hacks to make it viable on a cheap machine. Good video hardware, and enough memory for the colour display, were spendy. That’s why even into the 1980s you’d have machines like the ZX Spectrum with limitations like “every 8x8 block can only have 2 colours” which used less memory, and 40-column screens that were readable on TVs instead of dedicated high-res monitors…
Maybe I’m getting it confused with a different apple computer then besides the apple 2. I definitely have seen a clip talking about this. Maybe the original iMac or something.
Your title got me too.
I’ve always found it interesting how a black and white photo can distort our perception of when something happened.
Was researching million man March for a presentation. Some of the first pictures were in bnw even though it happened in the 90s.
My conspiracy side says it’s deliberate. 🤷♂️
Black and white film remained popular for decades after color film because it had different properties and could be easier to work with. Some photographers also preferred the aesthetic. Before digital photography became as good as film, B&W continued to be used in professional photography.
Appreciated. 👍
Oh it gets better (or worse?) there are plenty of color photographs from Dr King’s 1963 march and speech. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kennethbachor/rare-color-martin-luther-king-photos
At least this is somewhat more excusable since newspapers were still mostly using B&W. The color photos would have been for the weekly or monthly news magazines which were using color.
It’s not film, but the Apple II (1971) used a monochromatic display or something for technical reasons. I’m trying to find the quote but unfortunately I can’t so this is from memory. It was something like going with black and white allowed them a better frame rate/resolution over color (and for cheaper).
It’s possible similar tradeoffs existed for monochromatic film into the '90s.
The Apple II’s big selling point, compared to the other two big brands introduced in 1977 (the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Commodore PET) was colour.
But it was a weird and colour scheme that took advantage of clever Wozniak hacks to make it viable on a cheap machine. Good video hardware, and enough memory for the colour display, were spendy. That’s why even into the 1980s you’d have machines like the ZX Spectrum with limitations like “every 8x8 block can only have 2 colours” which used less memory, and 40-column screens that were readable on TVs instead of dedicated high-res monitors…
Maybe I’m getting it confused with a different apple computer then besides the apple 2. I definitely have seen a clip talking about this. Maybe the original iMac or something.