What is the best filter to get sharp but realistic contrast with b&w? also is there a film that is any better?

-- Lew Horn (hornlewi@yahoo.com), February 11, 2002

Answers

Lew:

Kodak has a wonderful little book detailing all about filters. Sharp has little to do with it unless the filter is badly scratched or the coating is bad.

There is no such thing as best. It depends on what effect you want and what lighting conditions prevail.

For enhanced contrast in B&W films for blue skies with clouds, Yellow gives a slight increase in contrast by absorbing some blue; Orange gives more contrast yet by absorbing even more blue, and Red thumps the contrast at ya' by absorbing almost all the blue and making the sky almost black. For a totally black sky at angles of 90 deg from the sun, try a polarizing Red filter.

For lighter foliage when shooting plants or trees, try a green filter. This really works if you have a red or purple flower petal against a green background. With no filter, a red petal against green leaves will look the same shade of gray.

Check the book for all the details.

Cheers

For more "natural" redition of Caucasian skin under incandescant light, a blue filter will do, and for genreally more pleasant overall tonality with incandescant light, a yellow-green filter works well.

Cheers

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), February 12, 2002.

Lew;

Visit www.tiffen.com and see the section called "Tech Talk" by Ira Tiffen for all you would ever need to know about filters. There is a section called Contrast Control that explains it all: Not as well as the Kodak book, as it has sample pictures, but for free on the net, its as good as you can get.

Cheers

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), February 12, 2002.

Lew, although a filter does not actually increase sharpness (actually it slightly decreases it by adding extra glass into the optical path), a filter can nevertheless increase the apparent, or visual impression of sharpness by increasing the contrast. This will only happen if the subject matter contains adjacent areas of contrasting color, so that the filter can make a useful discrimination. If the picture contains all gray tones, or nothing but various shades of yellow (for example) then the filter won't do anything besides cutting down the exposure a bit, which is not the object of using it. A moderately strong yellow is a good place to start, for cloud effects. One such is a Kodak Wratten #9, sometimes still known as a K3. A lighter one may be disappointing. A Darker filter worth having is a Wratten #16 or equivalent. Officially called a "deep yellow," it actually looks a bit orange (just like concentrated yellow stop bath looks orange in the bottle). An orange filter will give an even more dramatic cloud effect by darkening the blue sky quite a bit. Two filters in the yellow-to-orange range are quite enough. One medium, one a bit stronger. I would skip anything darker than that. Modern black and white films have less blue sensitivity than film used to have, reducing the tendency of the film to over-react to blue sky. You shouldn't need a red filter.

With skin tones, personal opinion and experience really comes into play. Some recommend a blue filter, as Richard did. A yellow-green filter can lighten such things as freckles. I think I would start with the Yellow-green (or a green) for this. The blue filter may lighten the lips too much. It can also excessively lighten the pupils of a subject with blue eyes. But, as I said, that's getting more subjective.

Let us know how you make out.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), February 12, 2002.