Black and White filters

[victory12]

Orange and Red in then summer

I use red for architecture and orange for landscape. I use a #29 red for IR film, even Efke, which recommends an 89B or greater. FOr people, I either use a yellow filter (for women to smooth skin) or green for men, to add to their 'swarthiness'. For a surreal bleached out, sci-fi look, I put a 80A cooling filter on.

 

[maddoc]

Recently I use an orange filter of some kind for BW with all of my most often used lenses, so I have it in E39, E60, and series VII. Still looking for one in 40.5 and E55...

 

[Nokton48]

I keep skylights on all my lenses, to protect the glass. And I have yellows, orange, green and red for most of my lenses. When I shoot color, it's usually digital.

My Minolta SRT lenses have original Skylight and colored Minolta filters, those have been fun to find and acquire. And Kodak Wratten series B&W filters, for all my Canon RF lenshoods, fit just as tightly as the original Canon ones (of which I also have a few).

 

[btgc]

FOr people, I either use a yellow filter (for women to smooth skin) or green for men, to add to their 'swarthiness'.

For mixed group portraits yellow-green seems to be best match? 🙂

Last summer I used Y-G as all-around filter in the garden and for people and liked it vs naked lens.

 

[Retrotech68]

Mostly medium yellow and occasionally red, outdoors. Sometimes I also use yellow-green, but not so often.
I used recently yellow for women portraits and got good results. Might use it again for the same purpose.

 

[BlackXList]

I think this thread would benefit greatly from some example shots.

personally, usually use orange, but I'm experimenting with others

 

[charjohncarter]

Maybe we should consider linear polarizing filters. No shadow detail lose.

 

[heartattackandvine]

I have recently discovered that I just love the way the ND filters deal with the (too) ample Australian sunshine. So, basically, now I have an ND filter on at all times (unless I am taking indoor photos, or it's dark outside).

 

[colyn]

I usually carry a red and yellow filter. If I am doing outdoor portraiture I'll throw in a green filter.

I have also been known to use a ND filter..

 

[divewizard]

I just recently did a black and white filter test with my Pentax 67 on a bright midday seascape. The Pentax metered well with everything but the dark red filter. You can see the results here.

 

[Dwig]

These days I never use filters as a only shoot digital and can do the adjustment during conversion to B&W.

In my old film days, I used red #25 or #23 and green #11 with some frequency. The green is quite nice on landscapes as it not only darkens sky much like a yellow #8 but also lightens foliage so that it renders a different gray than most tree bark.

 

[Chuck Albertson]

I keep medium yellow (K2) filters more or less permanently on the 35 and 24 mm lenses that I do most of my shooting with. Mostly for tone correction, especially subjects where I want to get that right in a b&w print, for example blue plaques in London, and a neighborhood in Tunis that I spent an afternoon in, whitewashed walls with blue doors and trim (without the K2, the blue goes from near-black to dull grey). Also, they punch up overall contrast on the ubiquitous gloomy day in Seattle. Also carry an orange filter for that rare day that's sunny, but with big clouds. This is really old school, but I've been amused by a lot of the commentary around the Monochrom M, which has been positively evangelical about using colored filters with the camera.


I just have to remember to remove them when I'm shooting color. It's been at least a month since I've blown that.

 

[ChrisPlatt]

Using a yellow filter benefits skies.
OTOH using a yellow-green filter benefits skies, foliage and skin tones.

Chris

 

[Teuthida]

What I find interesting is that some of the same people who argue the real world merits of spending ridiculous money to have the best "glass" will so easily degrade their lens by putting a $50 optical element in front of it and never think twice about it.

 

[BlackXList]

I think that's a different argument when it comes to UV filters than it is with filters to cut/emphasis different colours of light surely?

 

[charjohncarter]

I just recently did a black and white filter test with my Pentax 67 on a bright midday seascape. The Pentax metered well with everything but the dark red filter. You can see the results here.

Same here, mine overexposed using the deep red (#29). And I bet it would with a #25 too. The meter is either over or under sensitive to red. I'll have to think for an hour and a half to figure which one.

 

[venchka]

I just recently did a black and white filter test with my Pentax 67 on a bright midday seascape. The Pentax metered well with everything but the dark red filter. You can see the results here.

Same here, mine overexposed using the deep red (#29). And I bet it would with a #25 too. The meter is either over or under sensitive to red. I'll have to think for an hour and a half to figure which one.

Somewhere in the Large Format Internet Lore or a book on Large Format Photography, I ran across a table which listed additional filter factors for the red end of the spectrum starting with Orange. In essence, you had to add a stop or two to the red end of the spectrum.

Wayne

 

[Chris101]

Same here, mine overexposed using the deep red (#29). And I bet it would with a #25 too. The meter is either over or under sensitive to red. I'll have to think for an hour and a half to figure which one.

Somewhere in the Large Format Internet Lore or a book on Large Format Photography, I ran across a table which listed additional filter factors for the red end of the spectrum starting with Orange. In essence, you had to add a stop or two to the red end of the spectrum.

Wayne

CdS cells are about twice as sensitive to red as they are to blue. Photodiodes are pretty consistent across the the visible spectrum, but drop off around 820 or so. I generally add two stops to an orange filter, three to a #25 and four to #29 if the scene contains minimal red. Golden hour ... subtract up to 2 stops from these numbers. It's all very subjective unless you use a colorimetric instrument.

 

[DNG]

Since I scan my negatives, I can adjust contrast in CS4. But, that only works for "yellow", and "red" filters. Green filters are another thing.

I don't have or use B&W filters.

 

[Dwig]

I think that's a different argument when it comes to UV filters than it is with filters to cut/emphasis different colours of light surely?

No, its not really a different argument. The argument is the same but the balance of the scales is different.

The negatives to using colored filters with B&W are exactly the same as those that apply to clear/UV/Skylight filters. With the "protective" filters there is no positive in all but the rarest situation. With B&W "contrast" filters, as with polarizers with any film type, there can be major advantages, often outweighing the negatives by a significant margin.