Can anyone answer this?!?

Jenny

I am stumped here. Can anyone explain to me how color filters for B&W film work? Technically speaking, if the film is designed to eliminate color from the picture then how does putting a color filter on the camera have any effect? Am I making any sense? How can a film that is designed not to show color suddenly have color just by placing more color in front of the lens?:dunno :scratch :dunno

digismile

I think this is a pretty easy question to answer (I hope!).

B/W film isn't designed to eliminate colour. It's designed to be sensitive to light. Period. It is made of a silver based emulsion that produces clear for black (no light) to black 100% white light.

So since it is simply reflecting its sensitivity to light (all colours), a filter will simply eliminate a portion of the spectrum of light normally hitting the film.

Just my guess and if I'm way off, someone please correct!

Brad

Jenny

That makes a lot of sense. It is like the light just clicked on in my head, thank you!

wxwax

Cool, I love questions which force me to learn.

Here's a technical but through explanation.

digismile

Good article Sid

Jenny

Yawn:snore , it's 2 am and Im trying to read that article (which is awsome by the way!:) ) I will definately have to look at it more in the morning when my eyes will focus again. I just wanted to say thanks for all the insight. Jenny

digital faerie

Jenny wrote:

Yawn:snore , it's 2 am and Im trying to read that article (which is awsome by the way!:) ) I will definately have to look at it more in the morning when my eyes will focus again. I just wanted to say thanks for all the insight. Jenny

a simple experiment is to take a shot with a yellow, an orange, and a red filter and compare just how much more contrasty the red filter photo produces compared to your yellow filter shot, or a non-filter shot. I didn't read the article, but what I do know is that it definitely affects contrast for sure. Of course, certain colors in your subject are affected, but I can never remember which ones are affected by which filter, lol.

wxwax

digital faerie wrote:

a simple experiment is to take a shot with a yellow, an orange, and a red filter and compare just how much more contrasty the red filter photo produces compared to your yellow filter shot, or a non-filter shot.

Depends what you're shooting.

Color filters can do two things to B&W. One thing is to help separate colors which look different in color, but similar in B&W. The other thing is contrast.

As I understand it, a color filter in B&W blocks out its opposite color. So a red filter blocks out whatever the opposite color is to red. And so on for each color filter.