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Using Yellow Filter


andym911

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Old hat for many of you I am sure, but I must admit I have hardly ever really given it any thought..

Used one today and like the results it gives for certain subjects...

 

All taken with triX and developed in HC 110 with Medium Yellow filter...scanned with my trusted old flatbed.

 

Do most of you use filters as standard?

 

Curious as to if its just me who's discovering them :o

 

best

andy

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I'm relatively new to photography, so when I first started I had a huge assortment of B&W contrast filters—I realized quickly what a pain it was switching filters depending on the situation. Since I scan my film instead of traditional enlargements, I thought I could ditch the filters and do all my necessary adjustments through Lightroom or Photoshop...not quite the same. Now I have one B&W contrast filter, an Orange 040, and use that for landscape and architecture and it often makes a huge difference.

 

Tri-X, Summicron 35 ASPH, B+W Orange 040:

 

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Old hat for many of you I am sure, but I must admit I have hardly ever really given it any thought..

Used one today and like the results it gives for certain subjects...

 

All taken with triX and developed in HC 110 with Medium Yellow filter...scanned with my trusted old flatbed.

 

Do most of you use filters as standard?

 

Curious as to if its just me who's discovering them :o

 

best

andy

 

I use a yellow or an orange filter all the time when shooting B&W film. The only time I take them off is when doing night shots.

 

Bernhard

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In my experience, a yellow filter almost never hurts for black and while films, especially with traditional silver based films, which tends to be quite sensitive in the blue and UV range.

 

BW400 has a somewhat limited sensitivity to blue and UV, it appears to have a light yellow filter built in.

 

For portraits, I change between light yellow and yellow-green filters.

 

For dramatic skies, I take the orange-red filter, which takes a lot of light (4x).

 

Stefan

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The use of coloured filters is a fundamental technique if you are using B&W film, or shooting digital colour and converting to B&W in post processing. The first type of filter you put on the lens, the second you apply with software, but both come to the same result. For a yellow or red you darken the blues (sky) and usually increase contrast overall (white fluffy clouds on a dark sky), for a green you lighten green tones, and etc. I use a yellow filter as my default and compensate by increasing exposure by +1 stop, or my red filters by +2.5 or +3 stops. Of course with digital you don't need to increase exposure.

 

Steve

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I shot b&w for years without ever having any color filters. Oops- my foolish youth. Now I always carry a yellow-green for portrait shots and orange for most scenics. I find these two pretty much cover my needs and still keep my kit light and compact. They really make a huge difference, don't they? ;-)

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My standard filter for Black and White landscape work is a 1 stop Yellow/Green. Leica ones have Y/G on the mount and can still be found used in good condition in E39 fit but I doubt that these are multi-coated. The filter manufacturer B+W has recently stopped making Yellow/ Green filters.

 

If you don't want to lighten grass and are shooting in town then try a 2 stop orange as it will lighten brick and stone and darken the blue sky more than yellow. For landscape work it will give a more dramatic sky but at the expense of darker grass and foliage.

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Someone else can weigh in here if they've found otherwise but I've been regretting shooting with a yellow filter when it is overcast and gloomy. It seems to make things "muddier". I need to get around to making a solid test on this though and until I do I tend to leave the lens filterless on overcast days now.

 

Orange/Red is awesome for dramatic skies.

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Someone else can weigh in here if they've found otherwise but I've been regretting shooting with a yellow filter when it is overcast and gloomy. It seems to make things "muddier". I need to get around to making a solid test on this though and until I do I tend to leave the lens filterless on overcast days now.

 

Orange/Red is awesome for dramatic skies.

 

A yellow filter darkens blue. So without anything significantly blue in the image, what is the point?

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while the Film Forum may not be the ideal place to make this comment

I will pass on this tip.

If you are intending to use an M8 for black and White imaging,remove

the UV/IR cut filter and screw in a yellow filter. This will cut the

blue sensitivity and enhance the shadow detail due to the increased

IR sensitivity. Worth trying!

Doug.

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A yellow filter darkens blue. So without anything significantly blue in the image, what is the point?

 

It darkens blue but also lightens yellow, orange, and red. In a landscape setting on a dull day this can add just enough contrast to liven the image up. Yellow is usually the key element in making up the colour green, so while the effect is subtle in lightening green it means a yellow filter can be used pretty well as a beneficial universal filter for all B&W landscape.

 

Steve

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... and enhance the shadow detail due to the increased

IR sensitivity.

Huh!?

 

Shadows don't contain significant amounts of IR light. If you want to enhance shadow detail then don't cut the blue, violet, and ultra-violet light! A yellow filter will suppress shadow detail, not enhance it. However, unlike film, silicon imaging sensors aren't that much sensitive to UV light anyway ...

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It darkens blue but also lightens yellow, orange, and red. In a landscape setting on a dull day this can add just enough contrast to liven the image up. Yellow is usually the key element in making up the colour green, so while the effect is subtle in lightening green it means a yellow filter can be used pretty well as a beneficial universal filter for all B&W landscape.

 

Steve

This is one way to look at it but is kind of backwards. A filter can only absorb color. It cannot lighten anything. When you compensate exposure for the loss of the blue light and some neutral density of the filter, you in effect lighten everything that is not blue. And yellow is not a key element in the color green. Yellow can be formed by mixing red and green light or by the reflection of yellow wavelengths of light from a subject. Or by emission of light in that spectral range, by diffraction, by scattering (e.g. sunset,) or fluorescence, and perhaps by some other methods too.

 

Of course some foliage is yellowish as well as greenish or bluish. Yes a yellow filter can work well in some landscapes by suppressing blue light. This has been a common technique since the development of panchromatic film. But in the case of severe overcast, all colors are suppressed, so the effect of removing blue will be much less significant. (Especially missing will be the blue color of the sky so using a yellow filter won't darken it much.) However, only your tests can reveal if this is worth it to you in a given circumstance. If you are shooting a landscape that has yellowish foliage and you don't want it to become lighter, a yellow filter would not be a good choice. So sometimes you might want to consider a red or a green filter for a landscape. It all depends on what colors you want to darken in relation to the other colors of the scene. So there is no one size fits all solution.

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