Filters for B&W?

[Tonkatsu-Dog]

Hello all,

I am quite new to B&W film. So far I haven't used any filters but I am thinking of getting an yellow or an orange one. Is it worth it? Are people using it?

I would get it for my 'new' Canadian 35mm summicron. What's a reasonable price new or second hand?

Thanks

 

[bmattock]

Yes, a yellow, red, and orange are worth having for certain conditions. A polarized filter is also good for every kind of photography.

 

[lynnb]

Filters are very useful, don't worry about what other people are using, you'll quickly get the hang of using them - try holding a filter quickly in front of your eye and then away again, paying attention to tones rather than colour to see their effect. Otherwise just remember a filter will darken opposite colours and lighten similar colours.

So an orange filter will darken green vegetation (orange + green = darker tone) and comparatively, it will lighten white skin (orange + skin tone = lighter tone) in the same picture.

So you use filters to play around with the light/dark tone contrasts when viewing the world in black and white.

You might also find a neutral density (ND) i.e. grey filter useful, to allow you to use your 'cron at a wide aperture in good light - the ND will reduce the amount of light, so you aren't restricted to smaller apertures when taking pictures in bright conditions.

 

[ray*j*gun]

I do not use a polarized filter on quality lenses however a hood is a good idea. B&W film that will not be scanned and printed should benefit from filters. There is a lot of info on their use etc on line. If you will scan and print B&W then contrast etc can be added PP and a filter would not be critical.

 

[Dwig]

Back in the day when I shot film, B&W in particular, I found little use for the common Yellow (#8 aka K2). My kit included a Deep Yellow (#15 aka G) and the classic red (#25 aka A) in addition to a Yellow-Green (#11 aka X1).

The #11 Yellow-Green is very useful for landscape photography as it lightens greens (foliage) while darkening blues (skies). It both increases the contrast between the bluish sky and the light grey clouds (they're only really white when overexposed) while also increasing the contrast separations between the foliage and the greyish elements (tree trunks, branches, rocks...)/\.

 

[bmattock]

I do not use a polarized filter on quality lenses however a hood is a good idea. B&W film that will not be scanned and printed should benefit from filters. There is a lot of info on their use etc on line. If you will scan and print B&W then contrast etc can be added PP and a filter would not be critical.

I'm not sure why a polarization filter would not be useful on any lens. What it does isn't made redundant by a high quality lens.

 

[Hatchetman]

The question opens up a whole can of worms. If you were shooting B&W film and took a photo of a holly bush with red berries, the berries and leaves would be the same shade of grey. If you put a green or red filter on, the berries will jump out (either light or dark depending which filter you use). There are all sorts of applications like this.

 

[gns]

I guess one the the advantages of converting digital color to B&W is that one can apply this with
infinitely greater variation and control.

 

[Tonkatsu-Dog]

Thanks all, i'll start with a yellow one if I can get my hands on one. I do scan my negatives so I can apply quite a lot in lightroom. But would prefer to do when taking instead. Yes realise filters opens up a whole lot of other questions also... 🙂

 

[Addy101]

No, you can't do that in Lightroom. Read what Hatchetman wrote to know why: if you don't do it at the moment you take a picture, well, the information isn't there, so you can't make it magically re-appear in Lightroom. (It used to be Photoshop that had magical attributes, these days it is Lightroom :bang🙂

What you can do is try the effect of colour filters on your pictures in Lightroom when using a colour picture - I suppose, I don't use Lightroom, but I do it with PaintShopPro all the time, trying to find the right tone for the picture at hand. Doing that with colour pictures will help you to learn the effects of the different colours.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I do use contrast filters on bw film. Not just yellow and orange, but deep green and red.
Honestly, effect is minimum on lenses like Canadian Crons and more new ones. Modern film is also good to get good DR with correct exposure. All of my filters now more like ND filters to have 400-1600 ISO film on sunny day with large apertures.
If you are gong to scan, filters are even less significant.
Start with UV to protect and with yellow to have slightly better sky.
If you could order from BH it is cheap and original filters.

 

[bmattock]

I suppose that filters can be applied in software when editing a digital photo or one that has been scanned into the digital domain. Personally, I have had varying degrees of success, but I'm not an expert in the various software editing applications; and I'm color-blind as well.

The one filter that cannot be emulated in software is a polarizer. Despite the statement above about not using a polarizing filter on 'quality lenses' I believe the effect of a polarizer cannot be emulated or simulated in any software tool that I am aware of.

 

[ChrisPlatt]

IMO a yellow green filter is by far the most useful for general photography.
I recently bought a Leitz swing out polarizer for use with my RF cameras.

Chris

 

[giganova]

As others have said, you can use filters for contrast when you shoot in B&W. I always have a slight yellow filter on my lenses for a slight contrast enhancement and to protect the lenses. Orange and red will filter out most of the blue sky (because blue gets absorbed by a red filter), so you can get dramatic sky effects where the clouds are popping out, like in the examples below.

 

[giganova]

I suppose that filters can be applied in software when editing a digital photo...

Only if the photo is in color, but I think the OP was asking about B&W filters.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Only if the photo is in color, but I think the OP was asking about B&W filters.

I scan BW as color. In LR I could set it as BW and still use two color balance bars. Very powerful. Or I could kill saturation, but still use all of the color adjustments.

 

[bmattock]

Only if the photo is in color, but I think the OP was asking about B&W filters.

Yes, he was, but others mentioned using color photos and modifying in post-processing. That was my comment to that notion. I fully understand what the OP said and I actually responded to him in the first reply made in the thread.

 

[Dwig]

I scan BW as color. In LR I could set it as BW and still use two color balance bars. Very powerful. Or I could kill saturation, but still use all of the color adjustments.

While you can do a lot of adjustments this way, it is totally impossible to replicate the effect of using a color band pass filter, such as those discussed in this thread, when the color information has been lost as it is when the scanned film is B&W. To get these filter effects you either must use a real filter at the time of exposure or shoot a color image (film or digital). Converting a B&W image to a color digital file does not in any way restore the original scenes color information.

 

[Mablo]

I tend to use a lot of b&w filters. Usually my main idea is to use fluffy clouds and a bit darkened sky as background for my main motif. I simply hate washed out skies. My most used filter is 1.5 stops orange but I always carry a small selection of filters in my bag. Polarizer is a must have besides orange and yellow-green and a 2 stop grad ND filter.

 

[Ron-M]

I tend to use a lot of b&w filters. Usually my main idea is to use fluffy clouds and a bit darkened sky as background for my main motif. I simply hate washed out skies. My most used filter is 1.5 stops orange but I always carry a small selection of filters in my bag. Polarizer is a must have besides orange and yellow-green and a 2 stop grad ND filter.

I really like the sky in this photo. Did you use the 1.5 stop orange along with a polarizer???