do you remember when colour prints were an option?

Kodacolor Ad May 30 1955

Toronto. The year was 1955 and in the May 30th issue of LIFE on page 45, Kodak boldly promoted the use of its color print film for those special occasions! Colour prints had a big plus and many minuses… Colour was more realistic than black and white; BUT it was ‘way more expensive, had poorer resolution, a slower ASA (ISO), and much worse, the prints faded badly.

Even a decade later, Weddings were printed in black and white, or a mix of colour and black and white, if for nothing else, the fact that colour prints tended to fade far sooner that black and white prints. In fact, after Kodak merged professional with amateur color print paper, the company was sued for the serious fading experienced by wedding photographers who used Kodak colour paper and were sued by customers for serious fading issues (see my post about two years ago on fading).

Today, we almost always shoot in colour to capture the information, then post exposure, we may choose to show black and white for effect or to hide the “grain” in low light situations.

 

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