Why Are My Blue Skies Coming Out Stark White Rather Than Pleasant Greys
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What filters are you using? Darkening skies when shooting B&W film is usually the job of yellow, orange, red or polarizing filters.
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could just be the sky is so over exposed and the film is so dense you can't get any details. you might have to burn down the sky ( give it 5-20x as much light as the rest of the print ) during the printing stage.
have fun!
John
have fun!
John
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This. If the sky is very bright, it'll fall in zone IX or X (to use ZS speak), making it white. To help yourself give it texture, use a yellow filter. It will filter out the blue, making your sky darker. My #8 yellow filter is always on the lens every time I go out shooting in the daylight.
I don't know if this also depends on which film you're using - I'm not expert on panchromatic films, so I don't know if the sensitivity to blue is exactly the same from one film to another.
MattKing
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As an example, many people who typically use a yellow filter with Tri-X find that they don't need that filter with T-Max 100, because it has somewhat less blue light sensitivity.
It could be:
- Over exposure
- Need a polarizer, yellow, green-yellow, orange or red filter
- Overcast sky. There is not solution for an overcast sky, especially if it is uniformly gray
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I only use filters when the sky is a major part of the scene - to bring out the clouds, but unfortunately, down below where the buildings/streets/people are, become overly contrasted due to the filters.
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The skies are not overcast, but a flat cloudless blue. Film is FP4.
Shooting Chicago Loop skyline from a northwest viewpoint, 4'ish afternoon sun slightly behind me.
Hmm, better take another look at negs, maybe in fact it is overexposure.
Skies are so barren these days with the drought.
Shooting Chicago Loop skyline from a northwest viewpoint, 4'ish afternoon sun slightly behind me.
Hmm, better take another look at negs, maybe in fact it is overexposure.
Skies are so barren these days with the drought.
Andrew O'Neill
Moderator
Show us a negative if you can, please.
If you don't want to use a yellow, orange or red filter, try a graduated ND filter to just darken the sky. Be careful burning a lot, it can make the grain more apparent if the sky is an even tone.
That's what the human eye sees - the color blue as if painted on a flat surface above. That's not what the camera, and film, sees - not blue nor reflected light on a surface, as on the buildings next to the sky. It just sees a lot of light coming towards it. That's why, if you want texture in the sky, you need to help the camera see it as we do. Hence the filters - yellow is the usual solution, but, as many mentioned here, other possibilities exist.
I do think that learning to see the world as the camera sees - or making the camera see the world as you see it - it is both the most basic thing about photography but also the most difficult.
I should add that the sky is not blue. It's the way sunlight interacts with air particles and the vibrations that interaction creates that causes the blue wavelength to oscillate faster than others, except violet, which makes us see the sky as blue. If our eyes were more violet-sensitive than blue-sensitive we would see the sky as violet.
From what I understand - I'm not physicist, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - a panchromatic film is sensitive to the blue vibration but it treats the different colors within sunlight more democratically than the human eye does. Blocking out the blue vibrations with a yellow filter artificially restores what we see as normal.
From what I understand - I'm not physicist, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - a panchromatic film is sensitive to the blue vibration but it treats the different colors within sunlight more democratically than the human eye does. Blocking out the blue vibrations with a yellow filter artificially restores what we see as normal.
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cellphone snappy works great just holding it up against your computer monitor or a window...
Thank you, Mr. Tyndall.
However, a minor nit to pick-- oscillation is frequency, and if that changes, then so does the color of the light. Technically, the blue light is being scattered more than the longer wavelengths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndall_effect
... but it doesn't really change the fact that the light reaching the film plane is in fact, blue-- because the film has similar sensitivity to our eyes.
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B&W film obviously do not see color the way we do; but even different panchromatic films handle the spectral range into gray scale differently from us, and even with respect to each other. FP4 will render blue sky lighter than what we'd expect unless deepened with a contrast filter across the color wheel from blue. Polarizing filters do it differently, according to the angle of the sun; and grad filters do it zonally, over certain sections of the film, and thus downright hokey and fake-looking in most of the examples I encounter. A simple contrast filter set going from yellow to orange to light red is generally ample, although a medium green one will darken blue skies without bleaching out the look of reddish sandstone or clay colors in the desert like yellow to red filters do.
Most of the sky is no longer as deep a blue as I remember growing up in the high Sierra due to all the atmospheric pollutants. I rarely use a yellow filter anymore, but mainly carry a 22 deep orange, 25 medium red, and medium-dark green, all multicoated glass screw-in ones. But to the extent both blue and UV are blocked, there is less light scatter, so something like a deep orange or red filter will cut through the haze somewhat to retrieve crisper distant detail. But often I want to preserve a sense of intervening atmosphere instead. It's an esthetic choice either way.
Most of the sky is no longer as deep a blue as I remember growing up in the high Sierra due to all the atmospheric pollutants. I rarely use a yellow filter anymore, but mainly carry a 22 deep orange, 25 medium red, and medium-dark green, all multicoated glass screw-in ones. But to the extent both blue and UV are blocked, there is less light scatter, so something like a deep orange or red filter will cut through the haze somewhat to retrieve crisper distant detail. But often I want to preserve a sense of intervening atmosphere instead. It's an esthetic choice either way.
I too have moved away from yellow filters to the Orange, Red 23, Red 25, Red 29 and Green due to air pollution.
As Andrew O'Neill and jnantz have asked, can you show the negative, something like this, please?
Three “fixes”:
Polarizer.
Shoot IR.
Gradated filter.
Some common suggested tools that has moderate to little effect:
Yellow filter, very little on the sky generally, but looks lovely on the rest of many scenes.
Red filter has some effect, but depending on the humidity of the atmosphere and film you are using. But it also radically changes the log of the rest of the scene. Again depending on the red sensitivity of the film.
Burning can help. But has little effect if there isn’t any data there to begin with. IE contrast.
Polarizer.
Shoot IR.
Gradated filter.
Some common suggested tools that has moderate to little effect:
Yellow filter, very little on the sky generally, but looks lovely on the rest of many scenes.
Red filter has some effect, but depending on the humidity of the atmosphere and film you are using. But it also radically changes the log of the rest of the scene. Again depending on the red sensitivity of the film.
Burning can help. But has little effect if there isn’t any data there to begin with. IE contrast.
Agree that yellow #8 has little effect on the sky, but there is yellow #12 and yellow #15 before getting to orange and red. I have a set of #8 for everyday use, and a set of #15 to add more impact to the sky. I dislike the effect of the red filter, which I find too artificial (a very personal choice - I understand why some people do).
The effect is there, but it’s subtle.
Again it depends on the moisture content of the sky between the clouds. Sky blue is many grades and often it contains a surprising amount of white.
Look through a polarizer and a dark adapted eye through a R72 filter so get an idea of how much variation there really is in the sky.
If you really want clouds that stand out, you really have to fire on all cylinders so to speak.
But often the suggested, faint clouds can be nice too.
The problem is only when you always end up with an 19th century orthochromatic sky.
Carefully controlling exposure, is also an important tool. Expose for Zone VII or even VIII and let the shadows do what they like.
Totally agree with you on this. I was so surprised first time I went to Italy about how different the blueness of the sky was from Canada, and understood for the first time how they came up with the Genoa blue that you find in so many Renaissance paintings.
Which filter to use would depend on where you are. It becomes a matter of both taste and experience.
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