Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

I am thinking of buying orange and red filters for use on a digital camera to increase contrast with B&W images. Will this work?

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Yes, it will work. But you may want to look at your Picture Control menu and see if the are options under the Monochrome option to apply these filters electronically. The advantage is that you can use the filter function with any lens...you don't have to provide for multiple filter ring sizes .

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

Thanks for your reply.

Spirit Vision Photography Loc: Behind a Camera.

Are we assuming that we are shooting in the B/W mode on the digital camera, or applying the filter option after we have converted it to B/W from the color file?

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For a noticeably extreme effect, beyond what software can offer, you will need filters whose spectral range is distinctly narrower than the red, green, and blue filters in your sensor array. Filters like that are not generally carried by typical retail operations.

IOW, with "real world readily attainable" filters, you wont get anywhere with a color filter that you couldnt get through editing software (or a cameras built-in monochrome picture style settings).

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

I shoot in B&W

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

You give up a lot of options on how the colors translate into B&W when you shoot B&W in the camera. The red and orange filters are used to darken the sky, but if you use one the effect is baked in, where if you apply the effects of the filter in post processing RAW files, you can get the effect of any color filter or something in between two.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I commend you for taking this approach. It means you are visualizing in b&w at the time of exposure, rather than just seeing later what might happen. The result will be much stronger monochrome images.

I'm not sure what options your camera allows. Mine allows choosing yellow, orange, red, or green filters. This allows for a range of darkening the sky. As you may be aware, you can also minimize complexion flaws (yellow, orange, or red), strengthen facial features (green), lighten foliage (green), or achieve any number of other effects.

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

Thanks

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You'd be wasting your money. The camera captures in color at the sensor. You cannot "shoot in B&W" with a full-color sensor. Setting the camera to B&W doesn't nothing except causing the camera to convert the color data to B&W in a JPEG output format.

You'd be better served shooting in full-color RAW and converting to B&W on your computer. You can apply color filters during that computer-based conversion, just as the 'filter' effect can be applied to the B&W JPEG conversion by the camera.

You can find free and for-purchase B&W software, maybe to automate the conversion or to give a larger selection of conversion options. Adobe Lightroom has a large selection of B&W effects and color filters, should you already subscribe to this software.

If you want more contrast in your B&W images, 1, edit the color data to completion of a color version of the image, then 2, convert that edit to B&W and adjust first the blacks, whites highlights, and shadow sliders, then the contrast, if needed. Apply too a color filter during the B&W conversion, if desired.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Let's be really clear about something. We live in a world of color. Producing a monochrome image requires conversion from that color environment to a monochrome rendition somewhere along the way.

Some folks have purchased cameras with sensors constructed and installed in such a way that they directly capture and save a file representing a monochrome image by saving a single luminance value for each pixel in the image. These cameras may have any of a number of response curves, but if they are orthochromatic, they are equally responsive to all colors of light.

Some folks enable a function provided by their cameras to translate an image captured in three primary colors to a file representing a monochromatic image. This is typically done by summing the values of each of those three colors for each pixel to a single luminance value for that pixel. This is notably exactly the same thing that the monochrome camera does.

Some folks process a file representing a color image through a software process which translates that image to a monochrome representation. This is typically done by summing the values of each of the three component colors for each pixel to a single luminance value for that pixel.

Please note that wherever the translation to a monochrome representation occurs, the function is exactly the same. There is nothing intrinsically "natural" about this translation, regardless of where it occurs. Nor is there anything particularly natural about viewing a monochrome image, at least for the majority of the population.

Just like practically anything else in the photographic craft, there are multiple paths to the visual end. I would suggest that the photographic art, however, is a different story. Artistic monochrome photography is intended to be an elevation of the monochrome craft, not a deduction from the color photography craft.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Some folks even shoot B&W film with colored filters, have the results scanned to high-ish resolution JPEGs, and then process the results.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

It will work, but why? You can achieve the same results with Lightroom, Photoshop, or Capture One.
I used red filters with film to improve the contrast, but now with digital.

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

You have gotten good advice in this thread. With a sensor covered with a color filter array, there is no advantage to using colored filters. You can produce very good results using software to simulate a colored filter.

Now if you were to have an actual mono sensor, it's a different story and colored filters can now be used with the same effects one could have in the old days with B&W film. Leica is known for selling such camera, but I went the poor man's route and had a Sony A6300 converted to monochrome by the removal of the color filter array, and it has been so much fun to use it with various filters.

Another route is the Sigma Foveon sensors. The stack the sensor so that the top layer is for blue, middle layer for green and bottom layer for red with the result that for every pixel site, all 3 colors are recorded as well as full luminance data. In producing mono images, the Foveon produces a better result than a conventional RGB sensor, but not as good as you can get from a dedicated mono sensor.

I am attaching a sample of a Hibiscus bush with red flowers taken with the modified mono sensor covered with a red filter.

(Download)

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

A colored filter will work just fine on a camera that has a filter array in place. In b&w mode, it will have the same effect that it would have on film. (In regular color mode, it will restrict the color response exactly as you would expect.) Of course, you need to turn Auto White Balance off.