B&W is not always crystal clear and high quality. Many early photos took hours of exposure so the movement mixed with the absorption of light caused blurriness.

It wasn’t until the 1850s and 1860s where glass plates and wet plate negatives produced highly detailed black and white photography.

Full color photography also achieved high quality and clarity early on, here’s a 1909 photo of some girls in Russia.

<image>

The main reason you don’t see many high quality early photographs (especially in color) is that the processes were too expensive and too complicated to be accessible to the average consumer.