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Which colour filter for B&W wildlife
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Hi all
Thanks for your help with dealing with frost, will put everything together and try some new tricks, one more question tough!, thinking of heading to Killarney after holidays to photograph deer and foxs, (friend has a place staked out) want to use B&W film only, what filter do you think I should use, I’ve green, red & orange, film will either be fuji 1600 or 3200 ilford, need speed because dark location, any ideas
Your primary subject will be the animals so I don’t see how you’d need any filters. Adding filters will reduce your shutter speeds which you don’t want in your dark location.
No expert on this… but wildlife, dark location, B+W film, ISO 1600/3200 film sounds like a terrible combination.
I’m just waiting now for a link to be posted showing a photo that proves me wrong.
NFL, not sure about that combination but for B+W wildlife in general Nick Brandt is excellent.
Some of the finest b+w wildlife photography there is imho.I wouldn’t use any filter personally (as mentioned) they will cut light down even further. You can fix any issues in the darkroom later.
It’s probably the combination dark location (shutter speed) combined with film (potential wastage/chimping is always handy in the trickiest of conditions) and high iso (image quality) that would concern me.
But… and there’s always a but… where there’s a will there’s a way.
Heres a cut and paste from the web. I’m too lazy to type it out.
Filters for BW film are used to make one gray tone stand out more from the others. Since colors show up as shades of gray on BW film, one must have a way to differentiate between the blue dress of the model and the green background. A filter transmits light of its own color and holds back light of other colors. Let me repeat that… A filter transmits light of its own color and holds back light of other colors. A yellow filter transmits light of yellow objects and holds back light of other colored objects. The same holds true for a green filter and a red filter and any other color filter you choose to use. Yellow filters: The darker the yellow of the filter, the darker-gray the sky will appear. For an even darker sky, you can use a green filter and the white clouds will stand out even more. A red filter will produce a sky that is almost black. Of course, filters are used for more than just changing the color of the sky. If you shoot BW film, you should own several different color filters for altering the film.
So basically there’s no particular single filter you should try. It’s all about what your subject is, what tones are in the scene and how you want to record that image. Depending on the scenario a filter might lift the subject from the background or increase the drama etc. Just because it isn’t a typical landscape doesn’t mean you should rule out using some filters. If you have a slow moving animal to shoot, why not experiment a little, do let us know how you get on.
Can you shoot a roll before you go?
I think mono nature stuff is overlooked in general. Even the IPF (Irish Photographic Federation) dont recognise
it in their annual national nature competition. Funny thing is that the FIAP rules which the IPF say they adhere
to, do accept mono photographs..! In some ways I can sort of see where the IPF are coming from as nature in my
eyes is best represented in its original form… colour…! Unless that is you are shooting a zebra at night…???? On
the other hand I have been a fan of Nick Brandt’s work for a long time…… Its an interesting conversation……Richie
Wonka posted some pretty good stuff from Fota in B+W not so long ago which certainly looked very well (let me dig it up).
I’d prefer to see a Fox and most birds in colour… but other animals like Elephants and Zebras can work very well.
Edit – https://www.photographyireland.net/viewtopic.php?t=19932&highlight=
richiehatch wrote:
I think mono nature stuff is overlooked in general.
Richie
Agree. I once offered a suggestion to someone to convert to mono a shot of a lion. The hissy fit was hilarious.
Hi all
Thanks for the mixed advice, now that I may not need a filter I can reduce the iso, my lens is a sigma 150-500 so is a little slow, I may just get away with iso400, my plan for a deer was to tone it in sepia to give it that brown effect, after seeing Nick brandt I’m convinced to stick with B&W,
Something you need to remember about Nick Brandt…he shoots in spectacular sunlight…match that with Ireland if you will! He also shoots a lot in IR to emphasize the contrast then works on the film in PS. It’s not all pre-capture thinking that he uses.
Alan
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