Color Differences: Similarities Between Black And White Filters

Chapter 5: EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

NUANCES OF BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

USING COLOURED FILTERS IN BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Black and white filters let you control how colours are converted to shades of grey. Use them to get the right contrast and mood in your photos. A common problem in black and white photography is that certain colours look very similar when converted into gray scaled. For example, some shades of red, green, and blue look completely different in colour, but almost identical in black and white.

This can cause objects in a black and white image to blend into one another, leaving you with a photo, which is flat and lifeless, and lacking in contrast, and definition.

Coloured lens filters offer a solution to this problem because they affect the way colours are “converted” to black and white. This allows you to control the way they appear in the final image, ensuring that objects are well separated and clearly defined.

Each lets through its own colour of light and blocks other colours to varying degrees. For example, a red filter will let red light through, but block most green and blue.

The result is that colours matching the filter colour appear brighter in the final image, while other colours appear darker. In black and white photography this means that objects appear as lighter or darker shades of gray. This image shows how different filters affect the way colours are converted to black and white: USING BLACK AND WHITE FILTERS

Because of their different effects, each colour filter tends to be used in a different way.

RED FILTER

Red filters produce a very strong effect and greatly increase contrast. They’re often considered too “harsh” for most types of photography, but can be used to produce striking creative