Talk:Black-and-white

Black and white filters
Is there any (non-electronic) device to convert a color image to black and white? In Shadow of the Vampire, the filmmakers were such a thing to see what is being actually filmed. --Error 02:05, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, you could shoot either the negative or slide the image is recorded on, or a print of the image, with a camera loaded with black and white film. That should give good results if you have a color slide, and a macro lens.

Shindler's List
Shouldn't Schindler's List get a special mention here, being consistantly rated as one of the greatest films of all time etc? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 146.171.16.9 (talk) 03:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC).

No71.182.89.254 (talk) 04:37, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Newspapers
The majority of newspapers, according to this article, had color photographs by the LATE 70s? Er, I lived through the late 70s, and not too many newspapers that I saw had color photos. And I had been all over the country. I remember that one of the Dallas daily papers had color photos here and there in the late 70's, but I didn't see any other newspapers that had them.

I'll research it, but I don't believe that the MAJORITY of newspapers had color photos until, AT THE EARLIEST, the early '90s.

P.S. Remember that popular old childhood joke? (I was a child in the 60s and 70s). What's black and white and red (read) all over? A newspaper! I guess that kids don't tell that one, anymore! Slater79 14:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC) I thought there were hardly any colour photographs till 1982 AND SWEAR IT BUT THERE MAY HAVE ALREADY STARTED IN 1965 AS MY COUSINS WITH RICH PARENTS HAD COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF MYSELF AND HARDLY ANY COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS IN THE 1890s unless Czarist style or romantic Italy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.158.34.229 (talk) 11:21, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Use in dream-sequences
No mention is made of the film-standard of using black & white for shooting dream sequences is films and television, nor of the commonly held (though probably erroneous) belief that most people dream in black & white. (I think there's a bit of cause-and-effect here, in that the film/TV standard for shooting dream sequences in black & white has made people believe that this is actually the case in real dreams, possibly contrary to their own experiences.) At any rate, it'd be interesting to see a discussion of this added to the article. Unless there's a separate article for black & white specific to films? (This article does seem to be heavily weighted towards still photography, rather than motion pictures.) Lurlock 14:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Squad cars
Squad cars that are black and white are reffered to as "blacn-and-whites" on occasion. Please add that. --Defen d er 9 11  23:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)


 * That is discussed at Black and white (disambiguation) --jacobolus (t) 00:15, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Manga
Should it be mentioned that the majority of manga is printed in Black and White, as opposed to modern (and even old) western comics?71.114.94.46 (talk) 08:02, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems like something worth saying on the article about manga. Not really so relevant here. --jacobolus (t) 08:51, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Edit war
Two editors have been going back and forth with major changes, with no convergence. If you could both comment here on the point of your edits, or why you prefer one version of the other, maybe we could find a way to a compromise. No more edits or reverts to the article until you do so here, please. Dicklyon (talk) 15:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks Dicklyon for starting this discussion here. I have no interest in engaging in an edit war.  I found this article to be a more like a personal essay than an encyclopedia entry -- a confusing jumble of OR with no documentation and a series of unsupported claims.  In good faith, I rewrote the article to reduce the OR and to make it more readable. Without discussing the concerns or accepting even the grammatical corrections, 24.129.100.84 simply reverted my changes referring to them as a "massive page blanking." I did cut several paragraphs that went into extreme detail about how some modern directors use b&w to achieve a 'feeling' because these were not supported by documentation and were not central to this article.  After explaining my position on 24.129.100.84's page, I reinstated my edits because they are appropriate and no comment was given in opposition other than 'page blanking' which the changes were not. As 24.129.100.84 again reverted the changes, and given the disruptive nature of edit wars, I will not reinstate the changes.  However, as the article stands it still is a mass of unsupported OR and is in great need of rewriting. TheMindsEye (talk) 18:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. It looks like that user is single-mindely about black-and-white movies, and the part he objected to was mainly the removal of stuff on movies.  Perhaps we should tag that section as unreferenced for now, and put your other edits back and see if there's still an objection? Give him a chance to reply here first, in case there's more to it. Dicklyon (talk) 19:44, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Since he hasn't replied yet, I went ahead and reinstated your edits but restored the big piece he objected to the removal of. Since nothing in the article is sourced, it's hard to justify removing one part for being unsourced.  I recommend you both work on adding citations, because after part of the article is sourced, I'll start to tag and then remove parts that are not.  Dicklyon (talk) 05:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with the attempt to make a compromise, but 24.129.100.84's subsequent edits returned this article to nearly the exact same state as before. I am now editing the article to fix some of the grammar problems, format, and repetition.  To fully show the reason behind each edit, I am saving each one separately although it is much more labor intensive.  TheMindsEye (talk) 04:39, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

More technical content would be useful
There are advantages to black and white including greater detail due to simpler molecules being used; it's easier to alter the chemistry of development to target particular contrast curves, and we may also wish to cover C-41 black and white which uses dyes rather than halides. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.181.72 (talk) 22:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Obama?
So, this article currently has two pictures, and one of them is... Obama? Really? The first image makes sense. It's a very old example of a greyscale image. But... what's the significance of Obama? I mean, I know what his significance is in general, but what does a picture of him add to the reader's understanding of greyscale? I could see him being notable for almost any article on politics, economics, mass-media, etc. Buuut... imaging? Heck, it'd even make sense if that were a particularly well-known greyscale image! Except, outside of wikipedia, it doesn't seem to have any significance. It's not like the article makes any mention of him or that photo, so its sole contribution to the article is just, "this is grey." It also doesn't exactly reflect the 'world-view' wikipedia is supposed to be striving for. A completely random picture of Obama is as strange to me as my adding in a picture of Stephen Harper would be to you. Any objections to removing it? (and, if there are, it'd be very helpful to know why, as well as how a picture of Obama would help the comprehension of, say, an australian reader) 207.112.29.173 (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * It's in the section "modern use of Black-and-White", so I guess it's simply an example of modern B&W. I am Australian and I don't see what the problem is. It's not the best example photo and runs the risk of being political, but it's not so bad. If you can find or provide a more "neutral" example of modern B&W then go ahead and replace it. --Imroy (talk) 08:46, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I think the point of using a photo of Obama is that he is current Head of State who is recognizable to most people the world over. Using a current Head of State demonstrates the contemporary use of B&W photography. 68.37.161.91 (talk) 01:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Capitalisation
The title of this article is capitalised as "Black and White". I can't see why it is not in sentence case as per the usual MOS for article titles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_titles#Article_title_format). I notice that even within the page itself lower-case initials are used throughout, so the use of capital initials cannot be because the term is being treated as a proper noun. Should we not therefore change it to "Black and white"? Richard New Forest (talk) 14:51, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Monochrome photography

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should Monochrome photography be merged into Black and white? Qono (talk) 16:05, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

These two articles are largely redundant and should be merged per WP:REDUNDANTFORK. Qono (talk) 20:44, 17 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Not keen, but... go ahead as long as whoever does it does a comprehensive merge in proper context to produce a decently structured article. It mustn't be just a messy dump of text. JonRichfield (talk) 18:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * No I'd say that monochrome may include various colors/tones as part of the media (such as sepia or monochromatic game art). They are not exclusively black and white. Likewise, Black and White could also refer to pen and ink drawings or other art forms. If anything, a better merge might be for both of them into monochromatic art. Buffs (talk) 16:43, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
 * No I'm with Buffs - monochromatic includes black and white, but there's more to it than that. I think the two articles can happily coexist. Girth Summit  (blether)  07:03, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No Per Buffs and GirthSummit Kb03 (talk) 14:05, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Tentatively yes - essentially monochrome is black and white ...and sepia. So I think a single article would be a more robust way of presenting the info as there is a large amount of overlap. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:53, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No - The term "Black and white" is incredibly ambiguous. "Black and white" should take users to a disambig page. The current "Black and white" page should be merged into Monochrome photography. Not the other way around. NickCT (talk) 13:03, 8 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Black and white (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

A single shade of color in a black and white picture makes that a colored picture and not a black and white picture
A very good addition to the article. TudorTulok (talk) 09:15, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

"No color" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect No color and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 11 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Quick Quokka [⁠talk • contribs] 12:13, 11 March 2022 (UTC)