Green filters got me into trouble once, and it was entirely my fault. I was trying to raise the luminosity in a scene that included fir trees. Silly me - they were blue, not green! My dim brain saw green that was not there. Humblers like that make us stronger ... or me feeling more stupid.Originally Posted by LabRat
I use very deep blue filtration to slow the exp way down, suitable for lens cap exp. I haven't mounted it in a shutter yet.
Under a green leaf canopy, the sun reflects off the green leaves filtering through... Green filter picks this up...Green filters got me into trouble once, and it was entirely my fault. I was trying to raise the luminosity in a scene that included fir trees. Silly me - they were blue, not green! My dim brain saw green that was not there. Humblers like that make us stronger ... or me feeling more stupid.
Blue trees!?!!! Was that in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" land??? :-)
Steve K
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...D08Q_B0IwgEwEw
OK, but more like cyan... ;-)
SK
I wish! It was a forest of bluish pines! (Funny, but they didn't look bluish!)
-- that quote from Yellow Submarine's Pepperland.
Most foliage, including conifers, reflects a lot of orange light. Deciduous leaves turn yellow, orange, or even red when the chlorophyll green is gone in Fall. But those underlying warm colors are there all along too. A true tricolor green like a 58, or tricolor blue like 47B removes all the orange. But to deepen perceived green in foliage, you really need deep red or deep blue. Fun stuff!
Yes! I see a lot of red-yellow cast in Douglas fir. I also found out, the hard way, that a strong green filter can make green foliage look sort of milky. I found out, also the hard way, that an orange filter separates clouds wonderfully, but foliage and ocean water can go much too dark. Experimentation, successful or failed, is a good learning tool.
Yes, any filter can be a two-edged sword (working for and against you)... Remember that your eye and film spectral sensitivity are different animals, then add a filter without thinking, and surprise, even further away than you expected...
Yea Peter, green can be funny because many B/W films have (at least) a little peak in green, light can be rich in green (even in overcast), and we expect green stuff (like leaves) to be about middle tones, so if it gets inflated too much, we are surprised!!!
But green is an interesting filter as when I view the moon on my telescope with a green "lunar" filter, visually I see that it has a darkening AND lightening effect, such as slightly darkening the limb of the moon giving a little more "edge" to the falling off detail but also lightens bright stuff like the lines of ejecta from the crater Tycho, so produces contrast in both directions... With film, it can also lighten highlights too, under different light conditions...
A big plus is with our lenses that were made during the "ortho" period, that for lenses, the color correction was about centered for the green sensitivity of those films then and were corrected well, so behave well with green filters, and might be the "sweet spot" for these...
But I have been backing away from using filters for urban use, as here in the LA basin, the quality of light/brightness has changed quite a bit over the last decade or so, and (crazy as it sounds) the atmosphere photographs with a different "signature" effect, so as a subtle element, I allow the slight urban haze to "document" itself as a changing element (that will probably change again in another decade or two), so I let the skies do what they do now... (Photographing skies choked black with deep reds + pola combinations are so out for me now...)
But if you are using filters to help improve acutance, you can also do that with developers/development, and might not add another (undesirable) element to pop up somewhere else...
Steve K
Last edited by LabRat; 3-Feb-2018 at 17:44.
The density that 'flare' adds to your shadow area did not come from the shadows of the scene you are trying to photograph. I came from the highlights. Theoretically it is back-assward and the flare is trying to remove information from your focused image, but sometimes it works. Not everything has to have a perfect tone reproduction curve.
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