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yellow filter for digital B&W
I want to shoot B&W film and scan the negatives.
When _printing_ the negatives the use of filters (yellow - orange - red) is advised while shooting, is there any point in using a yellow filter when I only want to scan the film and do corrections in Photoshop? I think the use of a red filter in very bright weather (great skies and clouds) will make a difference... Views on this matter are appriciated - Rob |
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"Rob" wrote in message ... I want to shoot B&W film and scan the negatives. When _printing_ the negatives the use of filters (yellow - orange - red) is advised while shooting, is there any point in using a yellow filter when I only want to scan the film and do corrections in Photoshop? When you shoot on B&W film, you are left with a negative that has black bits, white bits and grey bits. There is no colour information in the black and white negative at all, so you have no colour info to base your photoshop corrections on. Using a colour filter at time of shooting alters which bits of the image are black bits and which are white bits. Eg a red filter lets only red light through, blocking green and blue. As a result, things that are green and blue (sky, leaves) will appear dark. Things that contain a lot of red in their colour (ie, reds, oranges, yellows, whites), will appear light. Using a yellow filter will will let red and green light through, but block blue light. So reds, oranges, yellows, and greens in the original image will appear lighter in colour, while blues will appear darker. In practice a yellow filter will also darken blue skies, but the effect isn't as pronounced as a red filter. Now lets say you take a photograph of three coloured crayons - red green and blue. Lets assume these crayons are equal brightness [1]. If you take the photo with no filter, all three crayons will appear the same shade of grey. If you use a red filter, the green and blue crayons will be darker grey, while with a yellow filter only the blue will be darker. An orange filter would result in a slight darkening of the green crayon, and a darker grey for the blue crayon. Now it makes no difference whether you will be printing directly from your negatives, or if you scan the neg and import it into photoshop, if you didn't use a filter when you took the photo all 3 crayons would be the same shade of grey. The only way you can change that in photoshop is to selectively darken just the blue crayon - for a subject more complex than 3 crayons, this would be nigh on impossible. The use of colour filters with B&W negs _always_ happens at the time of taking the photo. The only time colour filters would be of any use in the printing phase would be if the photo was originally taken on colour film, and is then being printed onto B&W paper. With a digital darkroom you can shoot in colour (either film or digital), and then produce a good B&W result in post-processing with photoshop. While this won't give quite the same result as shooting with B&W film, you can simulate the effects of various colour filters in photoshop, and see how they effect the final output. Because you are starting with full colour you can see how the same photo would look with different coloured filters applied. I think the use of a red filter in very bright weather (great skies and clouds) will make a difference... yes a red filter makes a partially cloudy sky come to life. Personally I prefer orange because it still gives great skies, but not quite as severe as red, and it isn't as severe on the other colours in the photo. Views on this matter are appriciated - Rob [1] In practice the three crayons would have slightly different brightnesses, and so would appear different shades of grey, but lets just assume for the sake of this exercise that they are all exactly equal brightness. |
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