In Depth: The Color Story of Film Photography

We were curious to find out about the colors that our Lomographers are capturing, so we combed through thousands of photos uploaded to our Community over the past 15 years. What we noticed was that the world seems to be moving in a more monotone direction. Now we want to find out, why?

To start digging into that question, let’s rewind a bit and get into a little history of color in film photography.

So, when and who figured out how color works? If we want to reproduce color, we first need to understand how it functions, right? As early as 1000 AD, Ibn al-Haytham was one of the first individuals to comprehend how light operates. He basically said that light travels from objects to our eyes, laying the groundwork for the laws of reflection and refraction.

Fast-forward to the 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton, maybe you’ve heard of him?, came along and developed the first color wheel, based on red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. So, in addition to studying apples falling from the sky, he also helped lay the foundation for modern color theory.

Now that we've got the basics of how and when color was conceptualized, let’s get into the reason you’re all here – how all of this relates to film.

Film May Be Black But It Screams in Color

The first roll of film was created in 1889 by George Eastman. It was made to capture light and shadow, so the results came out in shades of gray. Because of this, many photos were hand-colored, but this took a lot of time. Imagine coloring the tiniest details of your roll of film today!

In the early 1900s, the Lumière Brothers, with a fitting last name, invented the Autochrome process, using a screen of dyed starch grains, usually from a potato (yum!), layered on a glass plate that acted as a color filter. When the emulsion was exposed, it produced colored images. This became the main way that photograph-taking humans were able to reproduce color until 1935, when everything changed.

Kodachrome was introduced in 1935 and quickly became the first amateur color film to achieve commercial success. Unlike black and white film, it could capture the world in full color, using what’s known as the subtractive color process – creating color by layering dyes that absorb (or subtract) certain wavelengths of light. But with Kodachrome, those dyes weren’t built into the film. Instead, the colors were added later during a complex development process. This took the world by storm and made high-quality color photography more accessible.

Mid-Century Color Flourishing

By the mid-20th century, color photography had not only matured, it had flourished. With Kodachrome’s debut in 1935 and the continued development of slide films like Ektachrome throughout the 1940s and beyond, access to color photography expanded significantly. And by the 1950s and '60s, there was an explosion of color everywhere: cars, films, refrigerators, you name it. Still though, color film remained something special to use in the household, better saved for special occasions and travels.

Then by the late 1980s, film photography had become democratized. Cameras and film stocks were affordable and accessible, and so was processing. With this stability came rebellion. Photographers continued to experiment with color in more radical ways, and it was with those experiments that we saw new movements and developments in the film world.

In the 1990s, there was a trend towards a grunge aesthetic, and what did this mean for color? Many photographers moved towards a more realist direction, interested in capturing the world around them for what it was. At the same time, some photographers leaned the other way: embracing bold experimentation. Through cross-processing – intentionally developing slide film in C-41 chemicals – they chased unpredictability: punchy saturation, wild color shifts, and a surreal aesthetic.

This spirit of experimentation was mirrored in the Lomography Community. Slide film stocks like Sensia, Precisa and Elite Chrome remained among the most-used on LomoHomes even into the early 2010s. From that movement came our X-Pro Chrome film, designed for cross-processing, which created vibrant hues and dramatic color shifts. That same love for bold, unpredictable color also inspired our first steps into the color-shifting world of LomoChrome.

Imagination with Saturation

Come the 21st Century, color was brighter and more in your face than ever. Photos were saturated, cross-processing remained a popular form of film development, and the narrative was bursting with color.

Curious about how things have changed, we dug into our own Lomography Community archives, studying photos uploaded between 2010 and 2025 in order to see the most dominant color in every photograph, year by year.

Right away, one trend stood out: darker and more monotone colors outweighed the colorful ones year after year. What we found most compelling in our data was that color seems to be fading from film photography overall. Starting from 2010, vibrant, bright hues have steadily declined in our community’s photos. It feels like the world is moving in a more neutral, muted direction, and we wanted to know why.

Bring Home the Monochrome

We came up with a few possible explanations for why our Lomographers, and photographers around the world, are moving slowly away from highly colored images.

To start off, one big change over the years has been in lab practices. Back in the day, many labs used film-specific scanning profiles or carefully tuned settings for popular emulsions, so the scans already matched that film’s signature color and contrast. Now, with more obscure and newer films floating around, and fewer tailored profiles in play, labs often scan using generic auto-corrections. This can leave scans looking flatter, less vivid colors, especially if they’re shared exactly as they come from the lab.

On top of that, digital scanning itself also has the potential to introduce monochrome adjustments that weren’t in the negative. Going from roll to digital can nudge colors around: underexposed frames may scan darker and more faded, while overexposed ones might look washed out with reduced vibrancy.

Another reason for the shift toward monochrome might be the boom in instant photography over the last 15 years. In 2015, TIME Magazine published an article titled, The Future of Film Photography and spoke about the return of instant cameras and their appeal to the younger demographic who appreciated the unique aesthetic of instant photos. How might this affect color in our photos?

Some instant films have lower saturation levels than other forms of photography. Polaroid and Instax films often have a softer, more muted palette and a prominent grain, something photographer Robert Hamm talks about, which has the potential to scatter light and affect the color saturation. And of course, there’s that iconic white border around each shot, which means a big chunk of white shows up in any color analysis.

Then there’s the overall availability of film to consider. Older films–especially slide films and early color negatives–were often formulated for vividness (think iconic stocks like Fuji Velvia and Kodak Portra 400VC). In contrast, many modern films tend to be more neutral. Around 2010, Kodak reformulated its Portra line for finer grain, smoother contrast. Lomography’s own film lineup reflects this evolution as well. While we offer punchy LomoChrome stocks like Purple and Turquoise, we also introduced LomoChrome Metropolis in 2019 formulated for muted, cinematic tones.

Alongside this tonal shift, there has also been a rise in interest with B&W film. Stocks like Ilford HP5 and Formapan have become steadily more popular since 2018, according to our own research of photos posted to LomoHomes. Color film production remains a more complicated process than creating a new B&W film emulsion, so there have been more frequent releases of B&W films than of color films in the last two decades. Plus, B&W film remains a cheaper option with film prices surging in recent years, making it a practical choice for many to shoot more in B&W than in color.

Lastly, there's the idea that the world may just be moving in a more monochrome direction. As Anthony Morganti talks about in his article, The Desaturation of Everything, almost everything from our cars, logos, phones and pajamas are becoming less colorful. Photographers have the lovely responsibility of capturing the world around them, but can they really keep film colorful when color seems to slowly be fading from the world? Just something to chew on.

The thing is? We’re not mad about this trend at all. Watching the colors that spark our Lomographers’ creativity and seeing how they’ve shifted over time is fascinating. Because here’s the beauty of film photography: there are no right answers. Just the freedom to follow your mood and let your wild side shine, whatever shade it comes in.

So, tell us: are you a full-on technicolor dreamer, or do you keep it cool and monotone? For a little extra inspiration, take a time-traveling trip through Decades to see colors through the years, or wander through Colors to browse by hue.

written by angelinatacinelli on 2025-09-02 #in-depth #color #film-photography #color-films Share Article