The Black and White Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Monochrome Techniques

The book is quite complete. From equipment, to exposure, to development, to printing and toning, the authors demonstrate their all-round technical knowledge and practical experience in the insights and advises they provide, and support them by an abundance of illustrative photographs with technical detail (lens, film, exposure, etc.)

The authors appear to be partial to the Ilford XP2 film and use it in the majority of the photographs in the book. But XP2 is a C41 (color) process film. For a book on black and white photography, I think it would've been more useful to show more examples in typical black and white process films instead. That would at least give users some idea about how various film work in various developers and for various applications. Given the scope of the authors' experience, this surely is just a matter of choice.

Some discussions, such as those on black and white developers, do not have as much depth as I wish to learn, and some even appear to be a bit off-handed. This could be due to the authors' strong convictions.

The book tends to avoid discussing commercial products -- which may be a good thing or bad thing for different readers, but nonetheless it contains a number of plugs for British manufacturers (The authors are British I believe.) Personally I do not find this to distract from the quality of the book, especially since I share the same inclinations myself for those manufacturers.

I enjoyed the book enormously. It's full of content. I read some of the chapters more than once, and each time finding myself learning something new. This is a book that tries to teach you something, rather than just to sell you a book. It's well worth it.


The Bible of Black & White   June 28, 1999
25 out of 25 found this review helpful

Superbly written and organised. Assumes some knowledge of black and white (but not a lot). Gives detailed "how-to" for most everything you might want to do. For example: Toning of prints is covered in spots throughout, and there's also a chapter on the subject. In the chapter, use of brand name toners is described. They tell you how to tone the print in a step-by-step manner. Then, they also tell you how to make your own chemicals, provide safety notes, some words of wisdom from experience, and what's not important too. In all, this book will help advance a beginner and teach some new tricks to advanced photographers.


Extremely Technical   March 12, 1999
12 out of 20 found this review helpful

I was looking for some information to re-fresh my memory after two black and white photo college courses, so I turned to this book. Although I am sure it is very well written, it was very confusing and too technical for the little information of was searching for. I am going to put it on my bookshelf for reference, maybe after a few more classes. It does give great ideas on how to create different effects, but I feel I need a little more experience first.