Comparative Filter Designations

Different companies used many designations/codes for their color filters made for black and white photography. It often confused me if Brand A's filter xx was a similar color as Brand B 's code yy. For example, G is Gelb (yellow) for German filters. But Leitz used G for Grün. And Kodak used G for orange or yellow-orange. Argh. Finally, I ended up with so many filters, I had to make a comparative table. I posted an earlier version of this table in another thread, but MattKing suggested I post it in its own thread.

(Note this is an analog content area, but some digital photographers are using these color filters with their monochrome sensor cameras).

If you look around, you will probably find even more odd nomenclature. Please let me know if you see any errors.

Voigtländer filters from the 1950s and 1960s were another muddle. The boxes show a code, not a color! Here is the best I could sort out.

Hoya has UV filters. The have several types with anti-stain coating and so, but the only one really needed is UV(0) (there is an older version UV(C) which has the same functionality).

B+W skylight designation is KR 1.5, 11 or 011 seems to be a very old one.

A minor remark (similar to the one I made about Schott glass names like OG 550 in the other thread): For filters that are blue-cut longpass filters, such as UV, yellow, orange, red, the numbers that Hoya and Nikon use come from the wavelength where their transmittance begins. So an L39 UV filter transmits redward of 390 nm, Y48 is a yellow filter transmitting redward of 480 nm, O55 is orange transmitting redward of 550 nm, R62 is red transmitting redward of 620 nm.

This doesn't hold for green filters because they have both blue and red cutoffs, nor does it work for color temperature filters such as the 80/81/82/85 series because they don't have sharp cutoffs. But it is useful to know that some of the numbers aren't entirely arbitrary.