Black & White Filters on M8

[pgk]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

OK here's a question for the Black & White photographers amongst M8 users. Has anyone actually compared (as in actually compared in practice as opposed to theory) the use of yellow/orange/red filters at the taking stage as against using software to achieve a similar result? I ask because it struck me the other day that many digital only photographers, who have never used film, may well produce B&W prints and utilise filter 'effects' in software but might well not understand why they are even called filter 'effects'. I'm also interested because I suspect that the use of filters at the taking stage always made me consider their potential effect on an image when I took it rather than being an after though.

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Rusted Chrome]

I use filters a lot when I do B&W film photography. With digital, since every shot is in color, I always assumed the results would not match how the filters work with film.

 

What I mean is, the M8 takes a color photo and then uses its internal software to convert it to B&W. I would rather have control over that step myself as I am never very happy with the B&W shots as provided straight from the camera.

 

Sometimes I shoot jpeg + RAW in B&W mode so I can get an idea how the shots are coming out in B&W, but I always use the color RAW version and convert it myself for the end product.

 

I am wondering now if the B&W filters would be useful on the M8 or not.

[csg]

Excellent question. As mentioned, the sensor take a color picture so filters will be applied to that image. But would the filtered image result in a 'better' black and white photo in post-processing? Can anyone with a better technical understanding of digital capture and processing answer this question?

[ho_co]

Paul--interesting question. Unfortunately, I haven't tried it as a direct comparison.

 

I know the use of filters makes sense in one particular case, viz infrared photography.

 

Since what you're doing with black-and-white filters (or any filter for that matter) is cutting out a certain portion of the spectrum, and making an image with what's left, it makes sense to me that if you start by controlling the light entering the lens, you'll already be half-way there when you come to processing. The fly in the ointment is that you still have to convert the image to grayscale. Until you do that, the images just look "wrong."

 

Someone might want to try it in b/w JPEG. That would probably be a quick way to an answer.

[carlosecpf]

I've done some informal testing and, from my experience, I didnt see enough difference to justify using them. I might give it another try and do a more in-depth testing next weekend.

[jaapv]

The main advantage to using filters on the lens is the fact that you have to shift the curves and levels in the color channels, thus losing dynamic range in the channels that you manipulate if you create the same effect in postprocessing. So if anybody should be interested in testing this out, look for clipping and added noise in the color channels.