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