your favorite filter for b&w photography

Medium orange. Don't even bother with the yellow ones any more.

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I used everytime a yellow filter but i'm trying to take pictures without one. I'm suspecting that filters gives bad resolution quality to my pictures. I have a green and red too always in the bag.
 
I shot mostly with yellow filter most of the time, when I tried without filter I didn't find that much of a different though!!!

Red filter makes an amazing dramatic scene as shown above.
 
Another beautiful image, Ron.

Myself, I've never used filters until recently. I've begun to use a yellow for my outdoor shooting, and will soon add an ND8 to liberate the wider apertures for daytime duty.

An orange for portraiture may be on the cards, and probably a red for a bit of outdoor drama too.

Does anyone use blue or green, or is it worth giving these a miss ? I shoot a little scenic imagery, and also soon enough a bit of urban nighttime again too.

I anticipate carrying around the above with me when shooting for when they're needed, and wonder what people use to carry their filters around in. The above are mainly for use with my M3, and would like to keep them accessible, but also in some sort of compact manner.
 
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Does anyone use blue or green, or is it worth giving these a miss ? I shoot a little scenic imagery, and also soon enough a bit of urban nighttime again too.

A good question and I would like to bumping it. I know the classic as follow: the yellow (standard 'scapes + female portrait), the green (when too much foliage + macho-faced potrait) and, rarely, the red (for this nearly moonish pics). But what about the blue one?

According to the B+W Handbook "the aerial perspective caused by haze and fog is increased" or "mood-creating filter when photographing in fog or when aerial perspective is to be accentuated".

According to my mentor, one could use it as a kind of a softener by a noon-bright sun as well - you know, in that mediterranean backstreets - to decrease the contrast.

But, in terms of BW film, does anyone use the blue one in the reallity, still? Are the results really visible or it is nowaday just about a properly post-processing?
 
Blue Filters

Blue Filters

Sounds like some experimentation is in order and the use of a blue filter to lighten shadows relative to direct reflected sun should work as the shadows would be lighter with a blue filter under a clear sky. I also think a blue filter would tend to give a look of old orthochromatic film, which always had very light skies.

Ansel Adams has discussed the use of filters in his book "Natural Light Photography" which is well worth the read for many reasons.

Denton
 
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