Black And White Photography

• Photography was black-and-white or shades of sepia. Color photography was originally rare and expensive, and again often less than true to life. Color photography became more common in the middle of the 20th century, and has become even more common since. Black-and-white remains a niche market for photographers who use the medium for artistic purposes. This can take the form of black and white film or digital conversion to grayscale, with optional image manipulation to enhance the results. For amateur use, certain companies such as Kodak manufactured black-and-white disposable cameras until 2009. Also, certain films are produced today which give black and white images using the ubiquitous C41 color process.
• Television programming was first broadcast in black-and-white. Some color broadcasts in the USA began in the 1950s, with color becoming common in western industrialized nations during the late 1960s and then standard in the 1970s. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission settled on a color NTSC standard in 1953, and the NBC network began broadcasting a limited color television schedule in January, 1954. Color television became more widespread in the U.S. between 1964 and 1967, when the CBS and ABC networks joined NBC in broadcasting full color schedules. Canada began airing color television in 1966 while the United Kingdom established an entirely color system in November 1969. New Zealand began color broadcasting in 1973, and Australia kept airing black-and-white broadcasts until 1975. While no longer used much professionally, many consumer camcorders have the ability to record in black-and-white.
• Most newspapers were black-and-white until the late 1970s; The New York Times and The Washington Post remained in black-and-white until the 1990s. Some claim that USA Today was the major impetus for the change to color. In the UK, color was only slowly introduced from the mid 1980s. Even today, many newspapers restrict color photographs to the front and other prominent pages since mass producing photographs in black-and-white is considerably less expensive than color.
• Daily comic strips in newspapers were traditionally black-and-white with color reserved for Sunday strips.