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Why most Leica-ers like to shoot B&W?


mingmac

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Ok, I stand corrected... it was just a guess... what was the reason>?

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From what I read - I'm no professed expert -

 

one of the reasons was that colour films of that time were slow compared to B&W

 

as well, developing colour film was time consuming and expensive compared B&W

 

and guess the colours were not very natural as the technology for the dyes were still in its infancy.

 

Probably another aspect (i'm guessing?) were that most of the print media featured B&W and that was the commercial market?

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Joking apart. The original poster raises an interesting point. I have been interested in photography for 46 years, the first, say 6 years were solely taken up making B&W images. For the next 38 years I concentrated on mountain photography 35mm using mainly Kodachrome II 25 asa and Agfa CT15 50 asa through various Nikon F SLRs. When I decided to go back to a rangefider system there was no thought of using anything other than B&W. It almost didn't seem right to put colour reversal through a Leica M6, which I appreciate is silly and please don't take this comment literally . But my change of system fortunately coincided with the demise of Kodachrome so it never entered my head to use anything other. But a really thought provoking post, thank you for posting it

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I got my M6 several years ago and have shot nothing but monochrome since.

Why? I just never got around to color yet... so enthralling were the images I got, I just continued on as before. But I DO feel confident that when I start to shoot color (sometime soon, I guess), the results I'll get will be just as remarkable as the monochrome.

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People like the control B&W gives them and the fact they can much more easily print the negs at home compared to color. Scanning now makes digital manipulation possible and home inkjet printing viable without a darkroom.

 

B&W is photography brought down to the very basics. There is no color to distract from the image.

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There is no color to distract from the image.

 

I've never understood this point of view. I see in color (literally, not creatively) and not in black & white...so B&W always seems more distracting to me than color could be. Color seems natural (since our eyes see in color), while B&W is a phenomenon originating in photography and cinematography, not in reality.

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