B&W and Filters

[Woody Campbell]

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Has anyone done a comparison of B&W conversions of images taken with and without an IR blocking filter in a variety of lighting situations?

 

I'm aware of the theoretical issues and Sean's shots of the contents of his closet but the issue is whether there is a difference that plays out under actual shooting conditions.

 

Thanks.

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[j. borger]

You do not need to try to KNOW there will be a difference ... but what's the point Woody??

With B&W you are not after capturing reality .... shooting without the IR filter has similar effects as mounting a red, yellow or green filter or using the digital equivalents........ it alters tones!

In general .... without IR filters you get a broader set of tones to work with and the shadows seem more open ....... you get an extremely rich negative ..... that needs post-processing though!

Needless to say ..... i do not use IR filters (and shoot B&W 95% of the cases).

Skin tones can get a bit bright without IR filters .. but applying a (light) " digital green filter" (in conversion with JFI colourlabs profiles for instance) is one of the easy ways to correct this to your taste.

 

(Woody: great work at your website btw )

 

Hope this helps

 

Han

[pemayeux]

I have shot some and I think I like w/o filter better, even though it should be clearer.

[wparsonsgisnet]

With regard to the not-so-clear comment, you should expect thatthis from the IR in the image. The lens focuses IR at a different distance from the plane where it focuses visible light.

 

This means that the IR contribution to the image will very likely be out of focus, and particularly so for closer focus distances.

[Woody Campbell]

Thanks Han. That sounds right to me but I needed a sanity check. I've been shooting primarily without filters - for the occaisional image that I like in color I rely on the profile to get close - if there are obvious magenta blacks I touch up with a hue/saturation layer.

[steve_l]

I do only B&W, and I really don't like the blown-out skin and foliage in sunlight, so I use the filter.

 

Sean's point was that shooting without the filter opened up the shadows by letting in the IR, which gave him a lower contrast negative to work with - but his test was indoors, and he might not like the extra zap to the highlights outside. (???)

 

I don't find that dynamic range of a picture with filter, even on ASPH lenses, is too hard to control, the range usually fits nicely in the histogram even in bright sun and shadow. And in fact, filling the histogram gives you more tonal separation than compressing the range unnecessarily....