can someone explain filters to me?

Very simply, color filters lighten objects of their same color and darken those of its complementary [opposite] color.

For example, a red filter will lighten objects that are red but darken its opposite. In this case, blue and green. Red filters are useful for lightening skin blemishes in portraits. Red filters are also useful for making skies very dark. Also, foliage will almost become black.

Green filters, for example, are used to lighten foliage but red and yellow bjects will become much darker. Not a good choice for portraits, as skin can become unnaturally dark.

Yellow filters lighten yellow objects but darken green and blue -- that's why they're used for skies, although the effect on skies and plants is less than when using a red filter.

It's my understanding that chromogenic films react in the same manner to color filters as panchromatic (traditional b/w) film.
 
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Look at the color wheel. Look at yellow, and note that blue is opposite yellow. Blue and yellow are called light complements, or simply complements. A yellow filter will allow yellow light to pass through it freely, but tends to block some blue light. This will cause blue skies to appear a little darker than they would otherwise.

The complement of red is cyan. Since cyan is half-blue half-green, a red filter will tend to block some blue as well as green light but pass red light freely, thus darkening blues as well as greens. Red filters have a stronger effect than yellow.

As a practical example, you may want to photograph a red rose bush, but the red of the roses and the green of the leaves have about the same value (i.e., would appear about the same shade of gray on a B/W image). If you want to increase the contrast between the roses and the leaves, you could use a red or orange filter to lighten the roses and darken the leaves, or a green filter for the opposite effect.

A search should turn up a lot of info about filters for B/W photography. It's a fascinating subject.
 
As for 'what should you use' - for the majority of your pictures, a medium yellow will be the best choice (or a yellow-green, especially if there also is a lot of foliage or landscape in your pictures; I personally prefer the y-g to the yellow for all my pics).
Occasionally, an orange filter can be handy, if you want to bring a bit more drama to your pics (esp. for dramatic skies w/ white clouds against a dark sky).
I personally don't like the results from red filters - too overly dramatic & unnatural.
A green filter is mostly useful when you do lots of landscape (or if you want to do nudes with tan-looking skin - but you need models with perfect complexion for that...)
I never found much use for a blue filter.

Roman
 
I keep a uv or skylight filter on my lenses all the time so I won't have to clean the actual lens surface so often. And I have an FLD for shooting color film under FL lights and a polarizer to cut reflections. I also have a #25 red for the times when I shoot infrared. That's it. I don't use any filters for the effect because I hate that.
 
I find them to be kind of mind-numbing. Not my favorite type of photo, pictorialism; I'd rather look at something more contemporary.
 
OT but Ansel Adams has an exhibit at the MFA here in Boston through December, I'm excited! We've used his calendar for years. Free tickets are coming in the mail, can't wait! 🙂

 
atelier7 said:
what do filters do? what should one use for B+W film like XP2?
Click to expand...

For a pretty good explaination of filters, see if your library carries a copy of the "Leica Manual 15th Edition" by Morgan and Morgan. It has a chapter devoted to filters that will answer most of your questions.

I have no experience with XP2 but if it's B&W film then you'd want to use the normal B&W filters: yellow, orange, red & green. There are varying degrees of each color such as a light yellow and a dark yellow. Each wil have an exposure "factor" such as 2x which simply means it cuts the light in half so open your aperture one stop. Or you can divide the film speed by the factor and figure your exposure that way.

Using a hand-held meter, you can take a reading and then place the filter close against the sensor and take the same reading again. The difference in exposure will be quickly seen. A through-the-lens (TTL) meter is even easier as it will figure exposure directly.

Walker
 
doubs43 said:
I have no experience with XP2 but if it's B&W film then you'd want to use the normal B&W filters: yellow, orange, red & green. There are varying degrees of each color such as a light yellow and a dark yellow.
Click to expand...
C-41 films have a flatter spectral sensitivity curve than many conventional B&W films, which may have a response peak in the blue wavelengths, causing blown-out skies. Whereas an orange or dark yellow filter may be needed to reduce blue transmission enough to get natural skies with Tri-X, a yellow filter (or even no filter at all) may suffice for XP2. Orange and red filters have a rather profound effect on C-41 B&W films.

Richard
 
Just a word about how filters "lighten" some colors. Actually a colored filter darkens all colors, the complement of the filter color the most, then less and less as you move around the color wheel to the color of the filter itself, which is darkened the least. The filter factor is determined by the average transmission of light by the filter. The apparent lightening of the filter color (and neighboring colors) only occurs because exposure is increased (by an amount determined by the filter factor), otherwise all the colors would just get darker.

Richard
 
richard_l said:
C-41 films have a flatter spectral sensitivity curve than many conventional B&W films, which may have a response peak in the blue wavelengths, causing blown-out skies. Whereas an orange or dark yellow filter may be needed to reduce blue transmission enough to get natural skies with Tri-X, a yellow filter (or even no filter at all) may suffice for XP2. Orange and red filters have a rather profound effect on C-41 B&W films. Richard
Click to expand...

Thanks Richard. That's a much better explaination than I was able to give where XP2 film is concerned. As I stated, I have no experience with it or any C-41 B&W film. All of my experience is with traditional B&W films and the standard B&W filters.

Walker
 
Poptart said:
I don't use any filters for the effect because I hate that.
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Not meaning to be argumentative or to hijack the thread, but the film itself may have an "effect." It may, for example, make a blue sky much lighter that it appears to the eye. A suitable yellow or orange filter is most often used merely to correct the nonlinearity of the film so that the sky appears natural instead of too light. It all depends on the type of film and your personal preferences, of course.

It is also true that Adams and many other photographers use filters to get special effects, and whether one likes that is also a personal matter.

Richard
 
atelier7 said:
what do filters do? what should one use for B+W film like XP2?
Click to expand...

Filters either pass or block certain light frequencies, or they modify light that passes through them. More on that later.

What should one use for B&W film? The answer is, as is often the case, 'it depends on what you want to do.'

As others have so aptly stated, B&W filters tend to be blue, red, green, orange, yellow, and variations or mixtures thereof. Each is designed to pass a given frequency of light (a color) and block the rest to a greater or lesser extent. The most commonly-found B&W filters today are deep red, orange, and yellow. They are almost always used for outdoor B&W photography - a primary reason being that a light blue sky is rendered a most ugly and sterile shade of light gray otherwise, and the clouds tend not to stand out. A red filter will turn a blue sky dark and forboding - clouds will be white with dark tones, looks like a storm coming. Very dramatic. If that is your intent, then that is the filter to use. The orange and yellow filters do the same thing, but to a lesser extent.

Some people advocate using filters for shooting subjects other than outdoor scenes with B&W film - such as portraits, as mentioned. I disagree with the comment about a red filter - yuck. But try it and see if you like it.

Other filters, getting back to your first point:

*) UV (ultraviolet) or haze filters. Clear glass (to the naked eye) and don't cost you any f-stops when you use them. They may cut 'haze' in the air, they may not. Some say yes, some say no. They are often used to protect expensive lens elements. Use them if you wish, but I advise against 'stacking' other filters on top of them. If you put another filter on, take this one off first. Too many filters causes 'vignetting' of your photo - the corners get cut off by the protrusion of the filters into the frame.

*) Polarizer. The most important filter there is. Few use it, everyone should. B&W or color, it helps both. Reduces and may remove stray light that bounces around every scene, but especially outdoors. Cuts glare on glass and water, not so much on shiny metal. With an SLR, you turn the filter (it comes in two pieces that rotate but don't come apart) to see the effect - with a RF it is harder but still can be done, and should be.

*) ND (neutral density). Just a gray filter. Gray to a certain factor. Cuts light evenly across the spectrum, but does not 'color' the light. Useful for both B&W and color and slide. Use it if you want to shoot wide open at a subject but the film speed is too high to allow that otherwise. You could call it a film speed reducer. If you ever wondered how the old guys got some of those great outdoor shots with bokeh using their old f3.5 lenses and 1/300 top speed shutters, it was by using very slow film - 25 ISO was common. We don't have too much 25 ISO film anymore - but a good ND will drop 100 or 400 into that equivalent range.

*) ND Graduated. Not for rangefinders. Used with SLRs to cut ISO on one part of the frame and not the other - typically darkens skies that would otherwise be blown out, while not making the landscape too dark. Film only has so much capability to record light - called latitude, and landscapes and other outdoor scenes typically exceed that ability with too much light in some places, too much dark in others. ND grads are useful tools, but limited in applicability.

*) Light-altering or conversion filters. Used to compensate for artificial lighting indoors when flash is not used or when flash does not overpower the ambient lighting. Huh? Well simply put - light we think of as 'white' is often not. Our eyes lie to us. Typical incandescent bulbs put out light we think of as white that is more yellowish. Film is not fooled - color film shot indoors will be dreadfully yellow or orange from incandescent bulbs - green as I recall from other types. I have trouble seeing this, I'm color-blind. But there are two solutions with film. Get color-balanced film, or use a color conversion filter that shifts the colors to make white white again. Not important with B&W film. There are also color-compensating filters one can put over flash units, but that's seldom done nowadays. These are not needed for digital cameras, you set the white balance in camera or in post-processing if shooting RAW.

*) Trick filters. There are a lot of 'em, they were big in the 1970's, but then, so were bell-bottom jeans and disco. Some still persist, but some people still listen to 8-track tapes. Just say no.

Ultimately - for B&W work, get yourself a yellow, orange, and red filter. A polarizer for B&W or color. And a lens hood. ND when you start to feel the burn and want to really get creative. That is a good start - and worth carrying around.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
bmattock said:
Ultimately - for B&W work, get yourself a yellow, orange, and red filter. A polarizer for B&W or color. And a lens hood. ND when you start to feel the burn and want to really get creative. That is a good start - and worth carrying around. Bill Mattocks
Click to expand...

Good advice, IMO. I would, however, add one addition B&W filter..... light or medium green. A green filter will lighten the leaves on trees and grass or any other green object. For fair-skinned subjects, it can also improve skin tones somewhat.

Walker
 
Another good point by Walker. Fair-skinned subjects in B&W can have that death-slightly-warmed-over-look, which a green filter may help correct.
 
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