Shooting B/W film, do you use a Yellow filter?

I have a light yellow filter as protection on one of my lenses. Light yellow has such a tiny effect on contrast that it isn't wort thinking about it much.
 
I used a lot of different filters when I was shooting B&W film but only on occasions to get a contrast effect. You can turn daylight shots into nighttime shots with a deep red filter plus polarizer. It was sometimes impressive to do that. But, no, I never used any filter as a normal procedure...except UV filters. I've always used them as an optical condom.
 
I live in New Mexico and the light is just incredible. It's truly a photographer's/painter's paradise. The clouds often look like they were painted onto the sky. Yes, of course a yellow filter can be used for everything, just be aware that your yellow flower will be white.

I went on a filter test back in Florida using 3 shots for each image and a yellow, orange and red filter each time. Real PITA, but the only way to know, w/ a caveat. If you wet print like me, you might want to fine tune things for each filter a little bit. Like the op, all I shoot is Tri-X (so no worries on exact exposure), and lately develop it in Rodinal. The grain is just gorgeous. For what I do, that film and developer, shot in the Retina, looks really good on fiber paper. I tried it w/ my Nikon SLR that had a more modern lens, and the shots looked quite different. Didn't like them. So there's some variables to be aware of. One thing for sure, out here pics w/ an unfiltered shot, and one w/ a Y or R filter, look like night and day.

Never got on w/ the orange filter though. My wife at the time was black (light complected black, but black none the less), and the portraits AND the street shots looked flat, especially compared to the Y and R filters. I liked the red the best, but my Retina is shutter speed challenged, so the extra exposure for the red means you have to be careful on the slower speeds.

The Y filter is glued on mine only because I'm cheap. Or more accurately, because I have a brain. They want more for the "correct" Retina Y filter than I paid for the entire camera! So I used some removable glue to put a series filter on the snout.
 
I use a med. Y filter as standard. I have orange, red, green and others for some lenses, but mainly use med. Y. When light starts dropping, I take it off if I want to get some shots (especially with the Voigtlander SC Skopar 21mm f4 lens and FP4+, where the extra stop helps).
 
A yellow green (X0) filter will give you nicer skies, foliage and skin tones, so it's my choice as general use filter for BW.

Chris
 
Another yellow-green filter user here too. I shoot mostly urban scenes here in the UK and a yellow-green filter renders the orange/brown brickwork quite nicely. Added bonus is a slight darkening of the sky on the rare occasion the sky is clear.

I shoot FP4 and HP5 exclusively.
 
"Always" is a strong word. I don't use a filter when doing BW portraits. Otherwise i use a yellow or orange filter. I dislike blank skies in b/w photos. Yellow filters bring out a little contrast in cloud/sky without being over dramatic.
BTW. As for S Salgado's photos, the ones i've seen are strongly printed. That's his style. You can do that by prolonged development (when he was using film) and/or in the darkroom
 
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