Jump to content

Leica M Monochrom and color filters


Guest borge

Recommended Posts

Very well done. Thank you for showing.

 

The photos are perfect subjects for the monochrome. Make sure you get some wall prints done because photos should live outside the computer.

 

One caution, if you allow the camera meter to correct through the filter , it can bite you sooner or later. Filters work by passing the color light they are made of more than the other light and the camera tries to average everything to middle grey. Say you were photographing an orange flower that filled the frame center and there was an orange filter on the camera. The orange filter would try to lighten the orange flower and the camera meter would try to darken it back. The opposite happens with a complementary color to the filter. Say a red filter is on the camera and you are doing a nice green landscape with a deep blue sky. The camera will try to overexpose to compensate for lack of red and you would lose the deep grey sky you are looking for.

 

There is also a problem in that the camera meter does not see all colors equally so a color filter may throw it off. Yellow will be ok, orange less so, red will not compensate well at all.

 

My suggestion is to take a none colored object with deep black, I use a step wedge, then find the shortest exposure that separates the dark tones. Apply the filter, then redo the photo finding the correct exposure again. The difference will be the filter factor. Now you set the exposure for the scene, then apply the filter and increase the exposure manually , then make the photo. All the other factors that cause a wrong exposure are out of the picture and you get a perfect representation of what the filter will do every time.

 

The test needs to be done in the light the photo will be made, bright sun or tungsten.

 

If you are working in sun like here, the B+W filter factor will be correct, but the camera meter does not like the colored light, so you need to find the compensation. All this assumes the MM is using the same SBC for meter as all M6 and R4 and later cameras.

 

You can also use an ExPo disk or incident meter or camera meter without filter to determine the exposure, apply the filter factor supplied by the manufacturer , set the camera manually, and make the photo. This would be the classic way of making a correction from forever.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Very well done. Thank you for showing.

 

The photos are perfect subjects for the monochrome. Make sure you get some wall prints done because photos should live outside the computer.

 

One caution, if you allow the camera meter to correct through the filter , it can bite you sooner or later. Filters work by passing the color light they are made of more than the other light and the camera tries to average everything to middle grey. Say you were photographing an orange flower that filled the frame center and there was an orange filter on the camera. The orange filter would try to lighten the orange flower and the camera meter would try to darken it back. The opposite happens with a complementary color to the filter. Say a red filter is on the camera and you are doing a nice green landscape with a deep blue sky. The camera will try to overexpose to compensate for lack of red and you would lose the deep grey sky you are looking for.

 

There is also a problem in that the camera meter does not see all colors equally so a color filter may throw it off. Yellow will be ok, orange less so, red will not compensate well at all.

 

My suggestion is to take a none colored object with deep black, I use a step wedge, then find the shortest exposure that separates the dark tones. Apply the filter, then redo the photo finding the correct exposure again. The difference will be the filter factor. Now you set the exposure for the scene, then apply the filter and increase the exposure manually , then make the photo. All the other factors that cause a wrong exposure are out of the picture and you get a perfect representation of what the filter will do every time.

 

The test needs to be done in the light the photo will be made, bright sun or tungsten.

 

If you are working in sun like here, the B+W filter factor will be correct, but the camera meter does not like the colored light, so you need to find the compensation. All this assumes the MM is using the same SBC for meter as all M6 and R4 and later cameras.

 

You can also use an ExPo disk or incident meter or camera meter without filter to determine the exposure, apply the filter factor supplied by the manufacturer , set the camera manually, and make the photo. This would be the classic way of making a correction from forever.

 

Thanks for some very good information Tobey!

I did try to compensate for the filter factors in the beginning, but I let the meter handle most of the later exposure that I did and I always kept an eye on the histogram. So I am not trusting the camera's meter blindly when using camera filters :-) But it seemed to work well under these scenarios atleast.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Very nice comparative presentation on red, orange, and yellow filters! What about green filters?

Unfortunately B+W discontinued the green filter at least in 46mm. I tried a lot of places but had no luck. A used one might turn up. It would be nice if B+W made a batch given the availability of the MM. I think folks will be looking for one.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Just wrote a very short blog article about my experience with using B+W MRC color filters on the Leica M Monochrom, with some example photos:

 

Leica M Monochrom and color filters | Bo Photography

Thank you for the nice article. I have my filters except green. This really helps.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I wish there was some decent shooting weather here. What I have seen from my experiments with yellow,orange and red matches your findings exactly. All filters I needed were readily available or quickly ordered from Foto Huppert. (B+W)

Link to post
Share on other sites

Bo - very nice work, and helpful. Especially helpful to hear from someone who is discovering anew filters in monochrome photography, literally looking through fresh eyes. Sometimes it is as helpful to hear from someone engaged in fresh discoveries as someone who's an expert.

 

For those in the States, the Leica Store in D.C.typically has a good sample of filters, including green, in many of the sizes most familiar to Leica shooters - 39, 46, 49, etc.

Link to post
Share on other sites

FWIW, you can use color filters on the m9 and shoot b&w jpeg and you get the expected results and they are darn good as well. the color raw photo is pretty interesting as well. i know the mm is better, more detailed, etc, just want to point up that filter shooting isn't only available to those with the mm

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

B+W will custom make them at the regular price.

 

I contacted Schneider Optics. Bascially they can only cut down a larger filter if they have it still in stock to the 46mm size and mount it. They only have one single coated (060) Yellow Green left and it cost $20. The remounting to 46mm is another $99. They do not have any (061) Green filters left period. Kind of expensive...!!!!!!

Link to post
Share on other sites

if you need a plan B, my local optician has successfully cut down larger filter glass for me to fit smaller filter rings. it's helpful for those rarer filter sizes, and was certainly less than $99.

 

i've started with a yellow b&w filter full time on my 35mm summilux, and may add others later. i use step-up rings to 77mm for polarizing and 092 infra-red filters as they are used far less frequently.

 

thanks for doing the comparison testing, borge. very useful.

 

rick

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
I contacted Schneider Optics. Bascially they can only cut down a larger filter if they have it still in stock to the 46mm size and mount it. They only have one single coated (060) Yellow Green left and it cost $20. The remounting to 46mm is another $99. They do not have any (061) Green filters left period. Kind of expensive...!!!!!!

I just received a B+W (060) Green filter bought off ebay. It is the only one in 46mm I have seen in weeks. I probably paid too much but it was a lot less (1/3) of what Schneider wanted to build one. I am set with my BnW filters now. Just need some goo weather down here.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Nice writeup and images.

I still have a few filters from my M film days. I used the yellow on my M8 when I knew I would be doing a bw conversion and they always turned out great. I personally found the orange and red too strong for my purposes and settled on a yellow-orange (B+W #040) when I wanted something stronger than yellow.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...