Advice on using elmar 50 + red filter

[Q-dog]

I recently bought an elmar 50/3.5 LTM with red filter and hood. Now I am going to the Alps for a week and my plan is to mount the elmar on my Bessa R to have something pocketable while skiing. I am thinking that if I use the red filter and tri-x I could get some nice vintage looking mountain photos.

But I am new to using filters. And the elmar is a new lens for me. So I would like to hear your experiences of this combination. I understand I will loose about three stops? How will skin tones be affected? Any other issues to consider?

I might also shoot some colour and I have a feeling that the hood might be a good idea. But then I would rather not use it to keep the package pocketable. What do you think?

/Ola

 

[sevo]

The Elmar is irrelevant there. If you don't know what type of red filter you have, and what effects it has on your film of choice and subjects, you'll either have to do tests, or bracket a lot and do lots of safety shots without filter.

Tri-X is none too red sensitive, so three to four stops should be a reasonable starting value for medium red, but that thing might be dark red (and almost no good on Tri-X) or orange for all we know...

Sevo

 

[Q-dog]

The filter is a Leica filter made for the elmar. It is marked Rm on the rim. It comes in a small plastic case that is just marked Leica. In the case there is a paper with the text "rm" and "FIKYB". Does Rm stand for red-medium? To me it looks deep red though...

/Ola

 

[laptoprob]

Exposure compensation is easy to figure out: just measure with and without the filter. Then overespose another stop. As to what the filter does with the tri-x, trial is the best way to learn. Otherwise, you'd be amazed what you can google...

 

[Q-dog]

Thank you for your answers!

Of course I should have googled. FIKYB is appearantly a medium red filter.

And I have of course looked at photos tagged "red filter" and "tri-x" on flickr. But seeing photos is one thing, hearing the experience of the person who saw the scene, snapped a shot, expected a result and got just that - or something quite different. That is more enlightening.

/Ola

 

[laptoprob]

One of the strangest things I did with a red filter is some sheep on one of the outer Hebrides islands. They were marked with red paint by the owner. So I took the red filter to get rid of the marks. Very effectively. Now the sheep have whiter spots!

 

[Nokton48]

The old Elmar and medium-red Leitz filter should indeed produce an interesting, vintage effect. I just wouldn't collapse the lens on the body, as I'm sure you already know. If it were me, I would shoot two pix of an important shot, one at three stops over, and one at four, to give myself a choice, especially in mountain light.

I have been using my V1 Elmar with a medium-red Leitz filter, and it's a great combo. Pure-blue skies will appear nearly black, any cloud effects will be intensified in monochrome.

 

[John Shriver]

The Rm is pretty much equivalent to a Wratten 70. Much stronger than a Wratten 25, all three of the classic Leica red filters are strong. They're really meant for infrared.

In period Leica catalog, the filter factor for a Rm with Kodak Panatomic (not Panatomic-X) was 120. That's about 7 stops! This is probably too dark a filter to be practical.

Also note that you will have to remove the filter every time you change the aperture, unless you're lucky enough to have the 18.5mm screw-in one.

If you can get an Rh, that's a Wratten 29, much more practical, filter factor of 12 to 15.

 

[Rob-F]

You might consider not using the red filter for all your shots. In fact, I would suggest only using it for a few shots. The reason is that red filters produce extreme contrast. The sky, in the print, often looks black, or nearly so. Shadow detail may be nearly non-existant. A red filter, combined with slight under-exposure, has been used to simulate moonlit night-time conditions when shooting in the daytime. The effect can be quite convincing (appearing to have been taken at night), especially if the scene is backlit.

Colored filters are used to increase contrast and to darken the sky, so that it won't come out looking plain white in the print. But since modern films are not as blue sensitive as films used to be, the sky tends not to look quite so washed out as it did with older films. I have found the Ilford Delta films to preserve a bit more density in the print than some others. Also, the sky at altitude tends to be a darker blue, which will register as a darker tone in the print.

I like to fool around with filters, too. But for a trip to the Alps, while I might well try a few shots with the red filter, I would use more moderate filtration for most of my shots. This means using perhaps a medium orange filter for some shots, and trying some other shots with a deep yellow filter such as a K3 cloud filter (kodak Wratten number 9 equivalent). At high altitude one often wishes to use a filter to "cut through the haze." While a red filter is very good for that, it may be too much for pictorial purposes. The K3 already wipes out all wavelengths shorter than 460 nanometers, so it will get rid of ultraviolet while stepping up the contrast as well.. An orange filter (about a Wratten 16 as I recall) is still more effective, cutting off everything shorter than about 510 nanometers, yet the contast is not so extreme for pictorial purposes.

So my feeling is to try a few shots with the red filter, but try to have available at least one extra filter that is less extreme. Once the film is developed, you can pick the frames for printing that have givent he best results.

 

[Q-dog]

Thank you all for your replies.
According to my meter I should compensate 4-5 stops. I will have to experiment a bit. And I will shoot some without filter also for sure.

/Ola

 

[John Shriver]

The Leica number 1 and 2 yellow filters are great general-purpose filters.

Don't trust the light meter for determining filter factors, all it takes is a little excess IR sensitivity compared to film, and it would be nonsense.