which filter would you use?

[jetcode]

BW LF landscape, it's a late afternoon, clouds in the sky, you want to increase the contrast of the clouds but the subject is red and is being visualized as zone 5 or so

How would you proceed?

[jb7]

Polarizer?

[jb7]

uh-oh-
clouds in a blue sky?
90º to the sun?

yellow might help too-

[Scott Kathe]

BW LF landscape, it's a late afternoon, clouds in the sky, you want to increase the contrast of the clouds but the subject is red and is being visualized as zone 5 or so

How would you proceed?

Well I wouldn't do the red filter-did that when I was starting out and the red building came out all wrong but the sky looked good. When I used a yellow filter the building looked good but the sky didn't. I think your best bet would be the polarizer as long as the sun was in the correct position and you aren't using a wide angle lens.

If the subject is low in the image maybe a graduated filter would work for you.

[Ole Tjugen]

Maybe try a yellow-green?

It's also surprising how often a green colour-separation filter does the trick...

[Ron Marshall]

Wratten #12 (deep yellow) and a polariser, or Wratten # 11 (yellow-green, XO).

[Ben Chase]

I'd try the polarizer first, and then maybe an ND filter, but I think the results would be better with the polarizer if you're at a right angle to the sun.

[Preston]

Joe, are there trees in your prospective frame? How do you want them rendered? A filter that darkens blue will render the trees lower in value because they will have a high blue component. Also, since you do not want to render the red building at a value greater than (say) Zone V, a red or yellow filter will not be a good choice. So, either an ND Grad, as Scott recommended, or the Wratten 11, as Ole and Ron suggest, may be your best bet.

Unless you are using a compensating developer such as pyro, you will likely have to do some corrections during printing to keep the highest values in check.

Let us know what you decide, and what your results are. Better yet, post a pic.

-PB

[jetcode]

here is the actual image

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showpost.php?p=342909&postcount=46

The bridge is red for the most part, and I used a red filter. The light was nearly behind me to my right side as it sank in the west and I was shooting southeast. I doubled the density of the bridge in the print.

Lots of good answers to the question and increases my filter vocabulary, #12 is one of my favorite filters but I can't get find it in the Hi Tech system that I am aware of.

[Scott Kathe]

Nice image and I see the problem-can you bump up the contrast a bit? That might help.

Scott

[jetcode]

Unfortunately I need to figure out how to get this image to be seen correctly in a web browser. All the tone is getting squashed by the limited default color palette designed for pastels not black and white images, I think the tone values are being demoted and clustered into a smaller range. What I see on my monitor in PS is not what I am seeing in a web browser. Some of that is learning how to balance this image. Some of it is technology and process.

Here's another rendition ... this looks a little better

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y125/jetcode/mhgg-bw-master10-base.jpg

[Gary Brown]

This is getting a little off the subject, but can someone tell me a little about "compensating developer such as pyro"?

[kev curry]

Gary heres an article on Pyro............ http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/PCat/pcat.html

kev

[Preston]

I think this looks pretty good, Joe. Now that I see the photo, it is obvious an NDgrad would not work very well. The combination of filtering and PS work is about the only way to work this. Nice job. How does it look in the print?

Gary: Pyro is also discussed in Ansel Adams' book, The Negative'.

-PB

[Brian Ellis]

Red will darken the blue in the sky and lighten the red in the bridge. You must have underexposed the image if the bridge is red because it looks black (at least on my monitor), which is the opposite of what should have happened with a red filter and a normally exposed photograph of a "red" subject. Maybe this is a result of "doubling the density" of the bridge in the print but that isn't consistent with the Zone V look you said you wanted.

Kind of odd that nobody has asked anything about the shade of red. "Red" covers a very wide spectrum and the effect of a red filter on the bridge might or might not be desirable depending on the particular shade of red and how you want the print to look.

[jetcode]

Preston prints look much better, the entire tonal gamut is expressed. This image can be printed 18"x48" at 600dpi and the detail is pretty impressive. In print you can see windows in the shadows of the buildings, writing on the wall for Fort Mason which is the horizontal white patch near the hill, bridge side left, and the cables are quite distinct.

Brian, the backside of the bridge is dark, zone 0-1-2. There is some detailed but this rendering obscures that. The sun just popped for a few last breaths before disappearing so the shadows were fairly intense. The face of the bridge is several stops lighter. Later I will post the raw scan without correction so you can see where the image started from. It is difficult to evaluate an image through a web browser on many different monitors calibrated or not. I notice that the print tone has been reduced significantly from what is on my screen in CS3.

[mrladewig]

Joe,

Being a color photographer my first thoughts would lean towards GND or Polarizer as those are the tools most often available. But I see here that a GND wouldn't work. Perhaps a graduated red or orange would work (Hitech does have grad color filters available), but I'd still be concerned about its affect on the bridge tower. I think that a polarizer could still offer some help with the cloud detail and combined with a solid color filter like a yellow would help increase the separation.

Mel-

[AFSmithphoto]

Did I miss something or was there a reason that you couldn't use a red filter and have a slightly longer shutter to keep the "mostly red" bridge at V?

The closer the color of the filter matches the color of the bridge, the less you'd have to compensate with the shutter. Assuming the bridge is the organgy red I'm betting it is, a dark red (29) and an extra stop of light will have the effect of knocking the sky down by two or more stops without affecting the towers by mutch.

[Vaughn]

Infra red film and a 25A?;)

Vaughn

[Donald Miller]

The bridge is more orange red than actual red...Orange would darken the sky and tend to lighten the bridge probably more effectively than red. Depending on the film chosen, I'd probably over expose by one to one and one half stops and under develop by about 10% since the orange filter will also darken the blue light present in shadows.

[Gary L. Quay]

I've used orange filters from time to time. You may be able to darken the sky without blowing out the bridge. I have an orange Hi Tech.

[john borrelli]

Joe, I think the image looks great as is.

If you are asking how to increase the contrast in the sky, have you tried photoshop?

I recently made a decent cloud study with Ilford Hp5 using a polarizer and an orange filter. The sky in the negative really popped so the challenge was bringing out the sky in the print.

I first selected then increased the overall contrast of the sky using curves. I then used the selection tool and levels(or curves). I made small (almost painstaking) selections of parts of the clouds, isolating dark areas then light areas of the clouds. I brightened the light areas and darkened the dark areas of the clouds. I lightened or darkened selections of clouds closer to mid values depending on what looked best.

After this I minimally burned and dodged these same areas(not usually recommended as it is easy to overdo and hard to change if you overdo).

I then selected small areas of the sky using levels(or curves) to darken the sky areas. One of the last things I did was to use the sharpening tool(different than the filter). I took this tool and outlined the edges of the clouds, this sharpened up the edges of the clouds and made the clouds further stand out from the dark sky.

I am sure you could darken the bridge using the same techniques if you wanted to but again I think it is a great image as is.

[CG]

To answer your question as best I could, if you want more contrast, rather than filtering, I'd be tempted to try a slight bump up in developing time to get more zip, but truthfully, I like the image as I see it.

C

[Kirk Fry]

What about shooting it in color and splitting the layers in photoshop and recombining after changing the contrast as needed? K

[Michael Graves]

I'm with the #12. You'll darken the bridge a smidgeon, but lighten the sky by about half to 3/4 of a zone.

[Bill_1856]

Enjoy the view and buy a postcard.

[cjbroadbent]

I was taught to pack grads of various shades for B&W. Here's the one I use most for sky.
http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/mm440/downstairs_2008/5x7.jpg

[ignatiusjk]

A #15 yellow with normal developement. The yellow filter will add separation to the clouds without having to much of an effect on the red bldg. The scene has enough contrast being late in the day.