black and white filters

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Ben
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Im looking for one filter that i can use for "street photography" during the day. I was thinking an orange or yellow filter, thinking red would be too much. Just want some more punch and added contrast.
 
Im looking for one filter that i can use for "street photography" during the day. I was thinking an orange or yellow filter, thinking red would be too much. Just want some more punch and added contrast.
I think that the most commonly used filter would be a yellow filter. The results aren't as dramatic as using an orange filter but then again you benefit from only losing one stop of light rather than two stops. Usual advice applies, buy a quality filter from the likes of B+W or similar so that you aren't reducing the performance of your lens with a cheap filter.
 
well, it sorta depends what colours you have in frame
I mean, with a landscape you'd pretty much know what colours you're dealing with but for street, they could be anything.
if you want to bias towards skintones, I wouldn't use a filter really, but green puts some detail in skin
If I wanted to max out contrast, I'd use a contrasty film, shoot and develope acordingly
If you are intent on using a filter, I've found acros responds with an increase in contrast to orange, but orange is gonna lighten skintones, if you over expose your gonna blow them
 
The conditions under which a yellow , orange or red filter would add more contrast are those which produce contrastry light anyway - you need sunlight and shadows to get the effect, and if you have that, you'll have the punch anyway.

An orange filter could lighten brickwork if you want that.

Personally, for street photography I wouldn't use a filter as apart from anything else it needs more exposure, and so results in either less depth of field or more subject movement.
 
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Filters don't increase contrast in the normal sense. They alter the tonal rendering of certain colours by making them lighter or darker relative to other colours, which can sometimes look like an increase in contrast (eg, red filter darkens blue skies, but white clouds stay the same - increased contrast in the sky, but any number of odd changes in the rest of the scene depending on what colours are there). In street photography, the subject colours are rather unpredictable apart from skin tones, and you might get blue skies (but one filter won't enhance both unless your streets are full of people with blue faces).

I've never used coloured filters for street photography (or any filters, come to that). I tend to go for a fairly normal contrast, but if I wanted more, I'd do it in post on the scan (scan at 16-bit to give the room for manipulation and avoid banding on continuous tones). For street, I use Tri-X at the metered aperture for 1/400th or apply sunny 16 for 400asa, but I shoot at 1/250th, and then develop normally. I don't use a meter much - usually take a few readings at the start to get an idea of what the light is like (what aperture for the bright bits, what to use in the shade), and then wing it for the most part. For subjects with a fairly normal brightness range, Tri-X copes with sloppy exposure very well and can still stand contrast boosting in post if the exposures are sensible.

Have a look at this neg...

Tri-X Neg Underexposed.jpg

The first shot is badly underexposed - I had just reloaded and must have moved the aperture ring to the smallest setting without noticing until after the shot. This would have been early afternoon in f11 light in the bright bits, but was looking south in the shade at a fairly dark wall - more like f5.6, and I exposed it at f22. Oops. The second shot would have had whatever was close to the proper exposure. All negs on the roll were scanned with the same settings (starting from a 16-bit tiff).

Here's the first one after processing...

The Juggler.jpg

A bit muddy, but I was surprised at how much detail could be extracted from the darker tones - only the darkest bits go flat.

Here's the second shot with my normal level of contrast...

Neg 2 - Normal PP.jpg

That looks like a grade 2 print (from what I can remember of actual printing in a darkroom). With more contrast...

Neg 2 - Contrasty PP.jpg

That looks like somewhere between grade 3 and 4. The highlights seem to have survived, and the dress she's wearing has more emphasis.

Unless you want to achieve a particular shift in the relative rendering of colours, I would say that a filter isn't needed for street photography. If you want increased overall contrast, film and processing should be able to do it.
 
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Filters don't increase contrast in the normal sense. They alter the tonal rendering of certain colours by making them lighter or darker relative to other colours, which can sometimes look like an increase in contrast (eg, red filter darkens blue skies, but white clouds stay the same - increased contrast in the sky, but any number of odd changes in the rest of the scene depending on what colours are there).

I'll take a slight issue with this. It's true so long as all parts of the scene are lit by the same colour illumination. In bright sunlight, the parts in the sun will be lit by yellowish light, and the parts in the shade will be lit (by definition) by light from the sky which has a blue tinge. You can often see this very plainly in colour photos where areas in shadow appear to have a bluish tinge. Hence, a yellow, orange or red filter in these conditions will have a greater effect on areas in the shade than those in direct sun - even if the colours are identical. This will increase the contrast. That's one reason to take care with red filters, as they can lead to underexposure in the darker areas of a scene.
 
I'll take a slight issue with this. It's true so long as all parts of the scene are lit by the same colour illumination. In bright sunlight, the parts in the sun will be lit by yellowish light, and the parts in the shade will be lit (by definition) by light from the sky which has a blue tinge. You can often see this very plainly in colour photos where areas in shadow appear to have a bluish tinge. Hence, a yellow, orange or red filter in these conditions will have a greater effect on areas in the shade than those in direct sun - even if the colours are identical. This will increase the contrast. That's one reason to take care with red filters, as they can lead to underexposure in the darker areas of a scene.

I don't disagree. If the colours in photography are those resulting from the light reflecting from the objects in the scene, then the 'true' colour (be there such) is altered by the colour of the light. My point was that enhancement of contrast with filters is colour-dependent and isn't necessarily the same as overall contrast enhancement of the image after it's been captured. The spectral response of the film could be considered a form of colour filter, but for B&W at least, this is something we usually take as a given, and only add filters to get a specific effect. Apropos the original question, filters don't add punch or contrast unless a suitable choice is made for a particular subject. If one's street photography is at all fast-paced, there isn't really time to mess about with filters. Could maybe pick one and stick with it if the lighting and subject colours are unchanging, but I think that would be an unusual circumstance in street photography.
 
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