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

kshapero

kshapero

South Florida Man
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On one of my film cameras, I shoot nothing but B/W film (Tri-X). I have heard that many Photogs keep a Yellow filter on their lens all the time. Any thoughts on this? :confused: I presently have a CV Nokton Single Coated 35/1.4 lens mated to my M6. Gosh I have a B+W MRC UV filter on it all the time. Should I reconsider? :confused: Maybe go naked?:D No filter at all? :confused:
I shoot mostly outdoors but not exclusively.
 
I have a yellow filter and use one occasionally. I also have green, red and yellow/orange ones. If I see a need I will use them but I don't keep any filter on my lens all the time, not even a UV filter.
 
Depends on the emulsion and what type of shooting I am doing. For street work I will usually have on a yellow-green X0 for Delta 400 and FP4. No filter for Neopan Acros and Tmax400.

When shooting on a tripod with 120 film I'll carry a yellow-orange, orange, yellow-green, and red. The scene will determine if i use one.

It seems that the spectral sensitivity of film has changed over the last thirty years or more. Yellow filters have less effect in general than they used to?
 
Yellow, green (green-yellow), red.
I use yellow if I want to increase contrast at the moment of image taking. Green gives some interesting effect on skin and else. Red is for dramatic sky.
Those photogs you have mention might have old uncoated lenses. Makes sense to use light yellow often on those.
 
I still wonder what effect, if any, A Multi-Coated UV filter would have on a single coated lens?
 
I almost always use a yellow or orange filter for outdoor stuff (very occasionally red or green depending on subject). A filter on B&W will darken the colors that are opposite it on the color wheel, so for yellow/orange you get slightly darker blue skies.

Here are a few examples I shot a while back, comparing unfiltered Tri-X to yellow (Hoya G) and orange (B+W 040):

http://www.pbase.com/smcleod965/filter_test

The lens was multicoated and very contrasty. I imagine that a less contrasty SC lens may benefit more, but I guess you might run the risk of internal reflections off the back of the filter (?)

HTH,
Scott
 
Hoya G is an orange filter, not yellow. Same filter factor as the B+W. Imprecisely I would say that B+W tends to be on the 'redder' side of orange compared to similar Hoyas. Still, the same filter factors and color class indicates that they are pretty close filters. and your sample shots show this.

Wouldn't basic laws of physics say that any simple glass sheet can be neutral or make things 'worse (more refraction, reflections, chromatic aberations, etc.) never make things 'better'?
 
I often use a yellow filter, sometimes red, sometimes no filter at all.

Rather than slap one one because someone said you should, you need to think about what it does.
First of all, you aren't recording colour, just light and dark. But, what you are photographing has both colour and lightness. A yellow filter will make yellow things lighter, and things on the other side of the colour wheel (blues and purples) darker. For instance, the classic red filter example of a red flower and green leaves. With no filter, the flower and leaves have a similar lightness, and therefore you get a single tone of grey. Now use a red filter, the flower gets lighter, the leaves darker, and the flower now pops of the green leaves, as you expect when you see it in colour.

Now, I use a yellow filter during the day for any number of reasons - clouds and sky become more separated (the yellow filter darkens the sky) - Caucasian skin gets a bit lighter with a yellow filter, and looks more "normal".

You also have to remember a few things. Shadows are lit by light from the sky, not directly lit by the sun, so they are blue, and will get darker with a yellow filter. So it will increase the light/shadow contrast which can be good or bad.

Basically the rule I follow is "don't put anything in front of your lens unless you have a good reason to" that applies to UV filters too. They have an actual use beyond protection.

Cheers,
Michael
 
The "always use a yellow filter" mantra made more sense in the past, with uncoated lenses and not fully panchromatic films. Nowadays, you should put a filter if you are after something different. As a curiosity. Salgado claims to never use filters, and his film B&W stands out among the finest work ever made.
 
I have given up on filters as I often end up with results other than predicted with the shadows taking the worst effects at most.
I try to control contrast via exposure and development. Rarely I will use a deep red filter to create some specific drama to my shots, but usually end up with lots of black in my photos.
 
Screw Salgado’s claims.

A yellow filter gives a wonderful effect on smoothing Caucasian and Negro skin tones especially under full sun light and strobe flash photography for a more natural appearance. As an advantage it also gives pictures taken with modern B&W filum a look as seen with normal vision.

So let’s cut the crap and conclude that a yellow filter is mandatory for most B&W pictures.

If you know what you're doing you will remove it for certain situations.
 
theres no general rule for using a filter or not... you have to know what a filter does and what you WANT to achieve.
The myth of "always using a yellow filter" is 70 years old. Old folders had sometimes a permanently attached yellow filter to increase contrast.
Film and lenses were crappy that time, one needed the extra punch.
And yes i know that's a generalization and not 100% true :p
 
Dan Daniel said:
Hoya G is an orange filter, not yellow. Same filter factor as the B+W. Imprecisely I would say that B+W tends to be on the 'redder' side of orange compared to similar Hoyas. Still, the same filter factors and color class indicates that they are pretty close filters. and your sample shots show this.

Wouldn't basic laws of physics say that any simple glass sheet can be neutral or make things 'worse (more refraction, reflections, chromatic aberations, etc.) never make things 'better'?
Click to expand...

Yep - the G is definitely yellow! I have a K2 sitting on a shelf and that was in my mind when I wrote the previous. It's a pretty similar hue, with a 50% cutoff at 550nm according to B+W, while the G is more like 538nm, but also slightly less dense (I needed noticeably less exposure with the G, checked on a Nikon SLR matrix meter with the same results). I sometimes wonder if the filter factors include a "fudge factor" to account for the spectral response of film and the meter's SPD.

The K2 is more like an 022 (482 vs. 495nm) but like the G, it also looks less dense to me.

I think an appropriate filter can markedly improve tonal separation in B&W with minimal (or imperceptible) negative impact if it's high quality, properly multicoated and clean.
 
mfogiel said:
The "always use a yellow filter" mantra made more sense in the past, with uncoated lenses and not fully panchromatic films. Nowadays, you should put a filter if you are after something different. As a curiosity. Salgado claims to never use filters, and his film B&W stands out among the finest work ever made.
Click to expand...

Ahh, put down his finished printed work to a team of elves in a Paris photo lab who have the skill, experience, expertise and monetary incentive to radically dodge and burn using split filters. Also, his film is developed by the same team according to his taste using a special developer. I had the pleasure of viewing his work up close in Asia before it was mounted as my friend was the curator for his exhibition. There were over 300 prints, including some done by him. They were different to the ones done by the lab as they were marked on the back and signed/stamped.

I would argue that this look they achieve is out of reach for the inexperienced photog in a darkroom, hence a yellow, orange or even red filter is an easier way to pump up the contrast. Or alternatively the inexperienced photog could always pay top dollar and send his film and developed negs to said lab for developing and printing Salgado style.
 
The yellow filter will be of no effect on modern B&W films and thus can be merely used as a protective filter (at the expense of one lost f-stop).

Want to see some results (under the proper lighting circumstances only) on the negatives ? Use an orange filter. Really worth it sometimes.

Of course, there is the red filter too... Yet its effects may now rather suffer from the "special effects for special effects' sake" thing.

Caveat : this is my opinion based on what I am seeing on my (home processed) negatives after more than 25 years of B&W film shooting. Tonal range separation and greyscale experts might say otherwise.
 
I often use a yellow-green filter but not all the time. Another way to get good skies is to use pyro developers. Both often result in a 1 stop loss.

Modern films still require a yellow filter for some Situation, using a filter is situation dependant as is the choice of the filter Color you Need.
If you want fog in your Picture don't use any of the red leaning filters (yellow, orange, red) use a blue one instead etc...
 
Highway 61 said:
The yellow filter will be of no effect on modern B&W films and thus can be merely used as a protective filter (at the expense of one lost f-stop).

Want to see some results (under the proper lighting circumstances only) on the negatives ? ...
Click to expand...

There's nothing different about "modern B&W" films that in any way changes the impact of using a yellow filter and it is not the "lightinng circumstances" that has an influence but instead the color of the subject.

The classic yellow filter (e.g. Wratten #8 or old-style designation Wratten K2) has only a very slight effect, only slighly darkening fairly pure blues and some greens. Its usual purpose is to produce "normal panchromatic rendering" (to quote the old phrase) when shooting landscapes with sky and clouds. It increases the tonal separation between a light blue sky and grey clouds (they are rarely white).

Personally, back in the day when I shot film, I generally preferred a stronger effect and used a deep yellow (Wratten #12), orange (Wratten #15 ), or red (Wratten #25) filter when I needed/wanted to alter the rendering of the sky while altering little else in a landscape image. More often than not I would use a light green (Wratten #11, old style designation Wratten X1) to both darken the sky slightly and to lighten green foliage separating it from the greyish tree trunks and neutral toned rocks and soil.
 
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