Which level of yellow filters for B&W?

[bernard_L]

You can easily get sucked into getting filters you don't need so if you want a yellow and it doesn't say 'light' or 'deep' it will be a standard one-stop yellow filter. That is the one you should get.

+1

 

[Sal Santamaura]

I often quote a professional landscape photographer friend in Colorado who decades ago said to me "A good day and a yellow filter are optimum. And shoot one without a filter so you'll have something to print."

I suggest a B+W 022 yellow filter. It's a one-stop "#8" type and, unlike Hoya's products, is in a brass ring, not aluminum. The first time an aluminum-mounted filter galls to one's lens, "bang for the buck" will seem like an irrelevant concept.

 

[markjwyatt]

I mainly us med Y, but sometimes, such as in ocean scenes, deep yellow may help darken the water a bit more, such as this shot.


Surf Fishing by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

 

[Pieter12]

I often quote a professional landscape photographer friend in Colorado who decades ago said to me "A good day and a yellow filter are optimum. And shoot one without a filter so you'll have something to print."

I suggest a B+W 022 yellow filter. It's a one-stop "#8" type and, unlike Hoya's products, is in a brass ring, not aluminum. The first time an aluminum-mounted filter galls to one's lens, "bang for the buck" will seem like an irrelevant concept.

Even with brass filter rings, a filter wrench (or a set of them) is handy to keep in your bag. Really makes removing a stuck filter much easier.

 

[DREW WILEY]

A common beginner mistake is to think this is just about darkening blue sky for sake of better clouds. But how is your choice of filter going to affect other things in the same scene? Go to the Southwest where there is a lot of brick-red Navajo sandstone and related soil color, use a yellow, orange, or red filter to darken the sky, and you'll get over-exposed bland paste-like rock tones. Same with brick buildings. Use a green filter instead, and you'll not only bring out the clouds in a blue sky, but deepen the brick hues. If you simply look through a given color of contrast filter, you can get a general impression of the result, even though pan films see things somewhat differently than our eyes do.

Just a few days ago I went down to our shoreline, and had to remove my routine deep orange filter and replace it with a medium green one. Why? Not only was there a blue sky with some interesting clouds in it, but blue salt marsh pools in the foreground reflecting all that. And all around them was a lot of low salt-marsh foliage, turned red in autumn. If I had used an orange filter, everything surrounding the pools would have been rendered nearly as light as the pools themselves. All the drama in the scene I wanted would have been ruined.
The secret was the green filter instead. The blue of the sky and those reflective pool was somewhat darkened, allowing clouds and cloud reflections more opportunity to show, while the red foliage itself was dramatically darkened, making the pools themselves, and their details, far more apparent.

Learn to think and see like film, and not just along the lines of some filter advertisement.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Even with brass filter rings, a filter wrench (or a set of them) is handy to keep in your bag. Really makes removing a stuck filter much easier.

And they are not expensive either. Also they are light weight and do not take up much space in the camera bag.

 

[Sirius Glass]

A common beginner mistake is to think this is just about darkening blue sky for sake of better clouds. But how is your choice of filter going to affect other things in the same scene? Go to the Southwest where there is a lot of brick-red Navajo sandstone and related soil color, use a yellow, orange, or red filter to darken the sky, and you'll get over-exposed bland paste-like rock tones. Same with brick buildings. Use a green filter instead, and you'll not only bring out the clouds in a blue sky, but deepen the brick hues. If you simply look through a given color of contrast filter, you can get a general impression of the result, even though pan films see things somewhat differently than our eyes do.

Great point.

 

[markjwyatt]

A common beginner mistake is to think this is just about darkening blue sky for sake of better clouds. But how is your choice of filter going to affect other things in the same scene? Go to the Southwest where there is a lot of brick-red Navajo sandstone and related soil color, use a yellow, orange, or red filter to darken the sky, and you'll get over-exposed bland paste-like rock tones. Same with brick buildings. Use a green filter instead, and you'll not only bring out the clouds in a blue sky, but deepen the brick hues. If you simply look through a given color of contrast filter, you can get a general impression of the result, even though pan films see things somewhat differently than our eyes do.

You have to consider the whole scene for sure.

 

[Sirius Glass]

As far as the light yellow and dark yellow:

• The light yellow does very little to change the photograph
• The dark yellow is so close to the orange filter, that I use the orange filter instead.

 

[Robert Ley]

I have found that a great general filter for landscape is a light green or yellow-green filter. Hoya and Nikon refer to that filter as an XO. It darken sky's slightly and lightens foliage.

I also seem to recall that due to the spectral sensitivity of T-Max film, that a light yellow filter had the same effect as a medium yellow filter.

 

[Pieter12]

I often use an orange grad filter that darkens the sky while not affecting the scene below the horizon. Not cheap, but it works well.

 

[snusmumriken]

I use yellow filters for 35mm and larger. Sometimes i don't have the luxury of carrying a larger camera. My approach is to get a yellow filter with a 1 stop factor and an orange filter (2stop). I carry both. View attachment 323388

Fabulous!

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

Go to the Southwest where there is a lot of brick-red Navajo sandstone and related soil color, use a yellow, orange, or red filter to darken the sky, and you'll get over-exposed bland paste-like rock tones.

I've got a whole lot of pictures from Arches & Canyonlands that have very little contrast in the rock - it is all a blah uniform grey. A green filter would have been a better choice. The cliffs & canyons in Zion turned out OK, enough difference in the basic tone of the rock to bring out the strata.

 

[snusmumriken]

As far as the light yellow and dark yellow:

• The light yellow does very little to change the photograph
• The dark yellow is so close to the orange filter, that I use the orange filter instead.

Rightly or wrongly (I’ve never been able to decide), James Ravilious used a light yellow filter to make the rendition of colours in b/w more natural. Trouble is, he liked to take English landscapes with lots of atmosphere (humid distance), and surely the filter would have been working against him?

 

[Pieter12]

I needed to make a shot of a pink Cadillac against a white wall with a blue sky above. An orange filter would have given me a good sky tone, but lightened the car too much. I ended up using a green filter and some burning in the darkroom for the car.

 

[DREW WILEY]

If you want a more "natural" tonal balance than panchromatic films provide, which all are slightly less sensitive to green that our eyes are, either use an orthopanchromatic film like Acros, or use a light yellow-green filter like a Wratten 11 or Hoya X0 with your regular pan film.

The effect of a plain yellow filters on skies differs from what it once was. Not only is the current film selection a little different, but skies themselves are rarely as blue, even at high altitude, largely due to all the airplane traffic. It was amazing to see a bit of deeper blue back during the pandemic, when there were far less jet flights.

But one does not necessarily have to follow the stereotypical approach to skies by darkening blue. I often admire the old blue-sensitive plates prior to panchromatic films, and how the practitioners could create a wonderful sense of distance, atmosphere, and sheer scale that way. And we can do something similar today by using medium or deep blue filters with our regular films.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

A common beginner mistake is to think this is just about darkening blue sky for sake of better clouds. But how is your choice of filter going to affect other things in the same scene? Go to the Southwest where there is a lot of brick-red Navajo sandstone and related soil color, use a yellow, orange, or red filter to darken the sky, and you'll get over-exposed bland paste-like rock tones. Same with brick buildings. Use a green filter instead, and you'll not only bring out the clouds in a blue sky, but deepen the brick hues. If you simply look through a given color of contrast filter, you can get a general impression of the result, even though pan films see things somewhat differently than our eyes do.

Just a few days ago I went down to our shoreline, and had to remove my routine deep orange filter and replace it with a medium green one. Why? Not only was there a blue sky with some interesting clouds in it, but blue salt marsh pools in the foreground reflecting all that. And all around them was a lot of low salt-marsh foliage, turned red in autumn. If I had used an orange filter, everything surrounding the pools would have been rendered nearly as light as the pools themselves. All the drama in the scene I wanted would have been ruined.
The secret was the green filter instead. The blue of the sky and those reflective pool was somewhat darkened, allowing clouds and cloud reflections more opportunity to show, while the red foliage itself was dramatically darkened, making the pools themselves, and their details, far more apparent.

Learn to think and see like film, and not just along the lines of some filter advertisement.

Some digital cameras have filter selections in the menus that allow you can see the picture through in BW to give you an idea of what the filter effect is like. Don't get excited. Just another tool like a light meter.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If you want a more "natural" tonal balance than panchromatic films provide, which all are slightly less sensitive to green that our eyes are, either use an orthopanchromatic film like Acros, or use a light yellow-green filter like a Wratten 11 or Hoya X0 with your regular pan film.

The effect of a plain yellow filters on skies differs from what it once was. Not only is the current film selection a little different, but skies themselves are rarely as blue, even at high altitude, largely due to all the airplane traffic. It was amazing to see a bit of deeper blue back during the pandemic, when there were far less jet flights.

But one does not necessarily have to follow the stereotypical approach to skies by darkening blue. I often admire the old blue-sensitive plates prior to panchromatic films, and how the practitioners could create a wonderful sense of distance, atmosphere, and sheer scale that way. And we can do something similar today by using medium or deep blue filters with our regular films.

Yellow doesn't do much here in the NY Metro area. Maybe it's because of heavy air traffic or soot.

 

[markjwyatt]

If you want a more "natural" tonal balance than panchromatic films provide, which all are slightly less sensitive to green that our eyes are, either use an orthopanchromatic film like Acros, or use a light yellow-green filter like a Wratten 11 or Hoya X0 with your regular pan film.

The effect of a plain yellow filters on skies differs from what it once was. Not only is the current film selection a little different, but skies themselves are rarely as blue, even at high altitude, largely due to all the airplane traffic. It was amazing to see a bit of deeper blue back during the pandemic, when there were far less jet flights.

But one does not necessarily have to follow the stereotypical approach to skies by darkening blue. I often admire the old blue-sensitive plates prior to panchromatic films, and how the practitioners could create a wonderful sense of distance, atmosphere, and sheer scale that way. And we can do something similar today by using medium or deep blue filters with our regular films.

Agree. Even in sunny So Cal, sometimes the skies are hazy, and Y does not do nearly as much. I never got much out of X0. Maybe X1 would be better.

 

[DREW WILEY]

X0 or no. 11 was traditionally specified for a more normal skintone rendering using pan films. I indeed find one useful when trying to keep pale or pinkish Caucasian skintones from going paste-like when shooting TMax. But in terms of landscape clout, the X0 was surprisingly effective way up in the Bristlecones at 11000 ft a couple years, which was about the only place I could find blue sky and breathable air during that severe Sierra forest fire episode. But normally, at even higher altitudes, I carry just 22 orange, 25 red, and X1 green. In this case, the high winds atop the ridgeline in the White Mtns tempted me into handheld shooting with my Fuji 6X9 RF, and I wanted the mild filter factor of the X0 - only a stop of correction with TMY100, just like light yellow. A Wratten 11 is allegedly a stop and a half.

 

[randyB]

A book on filters can be a big help in understanding what a given filter can do to the scene. Kodak had several, from amateur to technical. There are many authors who cover filters quite well. Some are out of print but you can find them on the net.

 

[Arthurwg]

I have found that a great general filter for landscape is a light green or yellow-green filter. Hoya and Nikon refer to that filter as an XO. It darken sky's slightly and lightens foliage.

Here in the Southwest I usually use a yellow-green filter.

 

[GregY]

PM me if you like....i'll make a home for your unused yellow filters....
Plaubel Makina, yellow filter, Tmax 100, print on Foma Variant FB
(iPhone photo of print)

 

[Craig]

PM me if you like....i'll make a home for your unused yellow filters....
Plaubel Makina, yellow filter, Tmax 100, print on Foma Variant FB
(iPhone photo of print)
View attachment 323473

Which mountain is that?

 

[GregY]

Which mountain is that?

Mts Bident & Quadra