Using Colour Filters For Black and White Photography... The Great Pepper Shootout

Using filters with black and white film is the way to go, however there is confusion about what filters do what. Rob explores the three most common filters that he uses, and he uses them everyday, while shooting a still life of a bunch of peppers. It's not exactly Edward Weston's Pepper #30 but it's still interesting.
The George Eastman House in Rochester www.eastman.org/
This video is NOT sponsored.
Do you have a question? Ask in the comments section.
Rob Skeoch is a career photographer, working for five newspapers and wire services before joining the team at Major League Baseball for 17 seasons and the NFL for 14 seasons. Then he was a national manager for the camera group at Sony North America before going back to shooting.
Now he shoots for gallery shows around the world, mostly street work and portraits made with a Rollei twin lens. For 35mm shooting he uses a Nikon F3 and a couple M-mount Leica cameras and shoots mostly Ilford film.
tips for shooting black and white film,
HP5 FP4Pan F Ilford Zeiss ZM Distagon Summaron Biogon Leica Leica R6.2 R6.2 R6 Nikon Nikon F3 Nikon F3T Nikon FM3A Pentax Pentax LX Pentax MX Canon Canon F1 Canon New F1Minolta Minolta X-700 Olympus Olympus OM4 Olympus OM3 Olympus OM4T Olympus OM3T Contax Kodak Fiilmprocessing darkroom black and white b&w developing film at home developing black and white filmdeveloping 35mm filmdeveloping roll film loading film developing reels loading 35mm film on reel loading 35mm film loading 35mm into development tank #blackandwhitephotography, #filmphotography, #blackandwhite, #filmprocessing, #film, #bw, #ilfordhp5, #filmisnotdead, #blackandwhitephoto, #filmcamera, #35mmfilm, #leica, #nikon, #darkroom, #darkrooms, #film, #filmcamera, , #leica, #leicasociety, #ilford, #120film, #rolleiflex #rollei, #gitzo #kodak, #kodakfilm35mm #kodaktmax400 #streetphotography,, photo, photography, picture, 135mm lens, 35mm film, black and white, rollei, ilford, portrait, #nikon, #canon, #pentax, #zeiss #distagon #18mm #zeisslens #leicaphotography #leica_world #leicaimages #leicalens, #leica_camera #leicam6 #nikonf3 #nikonfm2 #canon_official #minolta #olympus #Leicam6 #Leicam #hp5 #ilfordhp5 #slr #slrcamera #slrcanon #hasselblad #hasselblad_camera #pentax67 #pentax645 #fuji #rolleiflex #largeformat #viewcamera #ebonycamera #deardorff #edwardweston

[@reusedisland1904]

This is a really well grounded teaching on the effect of colour filters on B&W film. There is a very nice smattering of excellent technical info along the way. It’s obvious that Rob is pulling these jewels out of a life-time supply of ‘mistakes, learn, re-shoot’. A very nice style of teaching. Thank you, Rob.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Glad you enjoyed it.

[@Larpy1933]

In the pre-digital days, astrophotographers used the “hat trick” to begin and end an exposure: To begin the exposure, hold a black hat in front of the lens (maybe surrounding the lens if it’s a bowler hat!). Open the shutter. Remove the hat and begin timing the exposure. Finishing the exposure: block the light path to the film w/ the hat, then close the shutter.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Yeah, that's useful. I've done similar in the studio.

[@Ybalrid]

Nice, I asked you a few questions about your use of orange filters some time ago, great to see a dedicated video on the subject!

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

I shot the peppers in Feb., just getting the video done now. lol

[@petervanorsouw]

Hi a Polarising filter is another way i cut glare on a still life, also on a landscape your sky will darken plus you still have shadow details. Plus you can use a colour filter with a Polariser to get the effects you describe. Thanks for highlighting the effects of filters with Black and White film.👍

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Glad you enjoyed it. Those are good tips.

[@c.augustin]

Sometimes a yellow-green or green filter might be the way to go - darkens blue and red, lightens green. Might give a more pleasing landscape with "fresh" greens (lighter in the B&W image). Harder to come by (X0 is a lighter yellow-green, X1 a darker green) than red, orange and yellow. Also useful for architecture. And then there is blue - a blue filter gives an orthochromatic or even a very old-style effect with extremely light blues and nearly black reds (depends on the filter) …

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Thanks, those are good tips.

[@jsbphotog]

Thanks- very good info!

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Glad it was helpful!

[@rogerbird2208]

Rob, great tips as always. I’ve just added the Eastman Museum as a stop on my motorcycle trip in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to it.

[@frederick3467]

sounds amazing

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

A funny story about the Eastman house. A group of us car pooled from Toronto on a day trip. It happened to be for the Edward Weston show a number of years ago. When we arrive, the gallery says they had a flood last night and the wing with the Weston show is closed because there's water on the floor. Ok, we just drove from another country to see it. So they say, go see the rest of the shows and comeback at the end and we'll see what can be done. At the end of our tour we returned and they took us in the back room, where they had brought out a bunch of great Weston shots from the vault, including platinum prints and silver prints of the same image, plus many photos... and we got to handle the unframed work!!!

[@rogerbird2208]

@stillshootinginblackandwhite that would have been amazing. I'll be on the way back on my Hamilton to Newfoundland trip.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

That sounds like a long trip!!

[@levivandenberg4223]

I just wanted to thank you for all the information youre sharing. So far this is the best explanation of filters with black and white photography that I've seen in KZbin. I'm pretty new to analog/black and white photography. Because of your great explanations I've become a lot better at shooting black and white, and rarely shoot color because I like black and white so much now. I hope to see a lot more like this video's and maybe even more in-depth information like zone-system lighting, contrast and pushing/ pulling film bcause you can expplain it so well. Thank you!

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Glad you're enjoying it.

[@FrankTitzeArt]

On Nikon FE2 / F4 with Ilford HP5/FP4 or others panchromatic films, I had to add for orange and red an exposure compensation by +2/3 or more (depending on how strong colored the filter are and on subject) to get not an underexposure for average subject when using build-in camera meter. Yellow was ok. Reason is that the spectral sensitivity of camera (but also of camera sensors) diff a bit to the films. The more you go into the extremes toward blue/UV or red/infra-red the more likely you see differences. Consider also that e.g with a red filter in typical landscape scenario with a lot of green and blue. your pictures get a lot of dark up to black picture elements, which also cause easily miss reading of the camera sensor similar to normal (without filter) low key scenario with a lot of dark/black picture elements. This effect is independent and additional to the spectral sensitivity topic. BTW: There are also yellow-green and blue (and others). While for me blue was never very interesting (who wants to make sky even brighter, etc.), is yellow-green interesting to differentiate multiple green tones better.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Those are good points, thanks for the tips.

[@pgmisha]

really amusing and informative .... I really appreciate your channel .....

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Thanks, glad you're enjoying them.

[@Larpy1933]

Rob, I can imagine you with another 8x10 camera for YT teaching purposes. Thanks again.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

It's just that I had the best set of lenses, which are also sold, and I had an 8x10 enlarger. It would be hard to start all over needing that much kit.

[@philipdahl9001]

Great video! Some good ideas for photo projects. I did a pepper still life project 30+ years ago on a Mamiya C-3 with green peppers, I'll have to find those negatives. It's about time to do a pepper project with my 4x5 with different colors of both filters and peppers 😊.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Great, glad I started this, now we're having fun.

[@monochromebluess]

Interesting discussion. I tend to just use a yellow filter on the Nikon F3 but you have convinced me to go for the Orange. Rather than repeating the exercise with a yellow pepper I would rather you showed more examples re landscapes etc.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

I think you're right. I'll work on that.

[@monochromebluess]

@@stillshootinginblackandwhite great news. If you do it would be wonderful to see side by side photo comparisons that show at a glance the clear differences.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

That will be the plan.

[@2252269]

This is really interesting. I have been struggling to get sharp images with a recently acquired refurbished Pentacon Six, Biometar 2.8/80. Having shot 4 rolls so far the results were inconsistent. Fast shutter speeds were okay (1/60-1/1000), both handheld and on an old no-name budget tripod. But the range 1/2-1/8 resulted strange looking unsharp images, no drama, but definitively not great. Then I took two night exposures , at 1sec and at 2 sec. Both are of great sharpness. Then I had guessed what you explained and invested in a sturdy tripod - to be soon tested.If it does not solve the issue I will avoid the speed range 1/2-1/30 - so there are two options to do. Thanks for your experience shared.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

It's such a tough thing to find out where the unsharpness comes from. If you can shoot in a dark room with flash, you'll see how sharp the lens is because the flash will freeze everything.

[@hanapen7681]

Thank you for your clear explanation about these filters. And I'm going to try to photograph a pepper this week... Nice idea...🙂

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Glad it was helpful!

[@CalumetVideo]

I mostly use yellow and orange filters and rarely use red. I never use the green and blue filters. When I shoot stills, I just use my Mamiya RB67 with 140mm macro or the Toyo 45A 4x5. I have the Hasselblad but can’t get close enough as I don’t have the 120mm makro yet. Thanks for the info!!!!!!

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Glad you found it useful.

[@garymc8956]

Only use red for dramatic skies. I’ve found a somewhat rare green/yellow, as in Leica GGR or Hoya XO, best for general all the time. Better than yellow and less than a stop, they just give a little pop.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Thanks, great to know.

[@Narsuitus]

Thanks for a very informative video. Did you take any red, green, and yellow pepper group shots that were filterd with the different colored filters?

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

No that would have been too easy. Maybe next time.lol

[@Jrslaterphotography]

Outstanding video. Just getting into film and b&w film photography. The one question that kept bouncing around my head was what would happen if you stacked the filters? Would thestack filters simply deat what you were trying to create or would there be a subtle difference between the the single filters? In other words, would a stacked yellow and orange filter make it too dark so you might as well use a red filter or would be just little darker that an a single orange filter? You got me wanting to play with my cameras, thank you. 😊

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

I think you should try that and see. Sounds like fun.

[@CareyMoulton]

I use aa B+W 092 on digital camera (A7, or D700, or 5D - un-modified) walkaround in woods, the shutter speed is fast (no tripod), and the high contrast images can produce interesting results (sunshine on trees, leaves, trunks). adding a Zeiss Softar filter to this combination also works well, although the softar seems to work better on Zeiss lenses (Jena 20mm F4) than more modern lenses (on modern lenses the softar seems to flare or cloud up).

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Those are good ideas and sound like fun.

[@mamiyapress]

You need to look at the work of " Charles Jones " and a book of his images called " The Plant Kingdom "

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Good idea, I'll take a look.

[@abnjohnny]

You discarded the Polarising filter but when you combine a 25 red for landscape you can adjust the effect by turning the circular polarising filter. My concern there has always been the degradation of the lens because filters are not ground as well as the lens. Do you agree with the concern about filter quality?

[@RobertBergan]

Polarizing filter seems to be the most ignored filter, even tho it can have significant effect on your picture.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Let me do some testing and I'll find out.

[@abnjohnny]

@@stillshootinginblackandwhite Thank you.

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

!

[@charlesspringer4709]

Those longer exposures need a reciprocity correction. Speaking tip: Never use the word "what" unless you are asking a question. This will force you to speak directly. "What you want to do is increase the exposure" becomes "Increase the exposure" or "Now increase the exposure", etc. It takes practice. Red is great for clouds in landscapes..

[@stillshootinginblackandwhite]

Thanks, I'll try and do that.