Filters for black and white landscape

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Just been reading about filters for black and white landscape photography, and there seems to be a consensus that they are necessary. Which do you think would be the most useful to buy first, a yellow or a red filter?

I appreciate that a red filter is more dramatic, but does the yellow one have any wider use? I want to take pictures in the mountains, hopefully before the snow disappears again!

Thanks :)
 
All my photography is black & white and I tend to leave a yellow filter on most of the time. However I also use an orange and red filter for a more dramatic effect and will, for example, make the clouds stand out nicely against a blue sky, but for general use the yellow is more useful than the red and doesn't require as much additional exposure.

The other filter for black & white is green or yellow/green, but this is used the least in my case.
 
Yellow or orange, Red is a little more drastic and gives a lot more contrast, It's worth checking the colour sensitivity of your film before you buy one though. Adox films tend to have limited red sensitivity so you'd need to use yellow or orange for example :)
 
Thanks - exactly the information I wanted. Have ordered a yellow filter now!
 
You might also want to consider a yellow-green filter, especially if your shooting a view like green grass or foliage against a blue sky, a yellow filter will darken both of them but a yellow-green will darken the blue of the sky a little and lighten the greens so they stand out a bit more. These were actually the preferred standard filter in Europe until Kodak started making the standard American yellow filter the more usual one that came with its cameras.

They usually absorb 1 stop of light, similar to a yellow filter although for some reason some such as the Hoya ones absorb 2 apparently.
 
s162216 said:
You might also want to consider a yellow-green filter, especially if your shooting a view like green grass or foliage against a blue sky, a yellow filter will darken both of them but a yellow-green will darken the blue of the sky a little and lighten the greens so they stand out a bit more. These were actually the preferred standard filter in Europe until Kodak started making the standard American yellow filter the more usual one that came with its cameras.

They usually absorb 1 stop of light, similar to a yellow filter although for some reason some such as the Hoya ones absorb 2 apparently.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that sounds very useful too I will bear it in mind.
 
I appreciate that this s a film forum and the info above is useful to mee to for my film use,howver out of interest do these filters also apply when using digital cameras set in b+w mode,i ask as im completely unsure.
 
Yes they do :) i alwaysfound it better to shoot in colour and convert after though, Silver Efex plugin can let you convert as if you had a colour filter on.
 
Although going a little out of this sections remit, I found a red filter on digital helped expand the dynamic range captured without the need for grads.
 
Tried both options - At the time I tried it, I preferred the filters, but that may well have been down to my poor abilities in photoshop. Haven't repeated the experiment since (it was a good 2 years ago!) - last time I shot a material amount of B&W on the digital camera, it was for a commercial job, and it was shoot raw and PP in SilverEfex, as there were requirements for both colour and B&W versions :shrug: Might give it another try when Danny has finished experimenting with my B&W filters and sends me them back :LOL:
 
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