[bb88]

A lot of bad photos in color can be improved just by tone-mapping colors to shades of gray. RGB noise turns into grain (e.g.)

Also a lot of "Black and White" television would be better called, "Grey and White" since the television would wash out the true deep blacks, and reduce the total image contrast.

As an aside, a similar effect happened in theaters for a long time where the theater owners would drop the brightness of the projector bulb to get more life out of it. But details in the dark would be lost. It may still happen today, I just don't go to the theaters anymore.

A proper screening of Citizen Kane would be fun to see in a dark theater with a bright DLP projector.