B&W photos with coloured filters????

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Csayce

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Hello I'm quite new to photography and over the last few months I've been buying all manner of equipment for my cameras.

Now I have many different coloured filters both solid and gradual and my question is based in this when buying some of the coloured filters there were explanations that this colour would work well when shooting B&W.

So after buying these colours and using them in colour photos and though I'm no where near let's say 60% sure yet of what I'm doing with the colour filters I'm still enjoying the effects I can get with them.

But my main reason for starting this thread was how do colour filters work when taking B&W photos? As when I've tried and for example I've used a green filter and taken a B&W photo of an area that has grass in the shot the photo still shows a B&W picture with no green???

Would some one please explain what it is I may be doing wrong or what I should be doing to use these coloured filters with a B&W photo.

I'm using a canon 500D with various lenses.

By the way I've also tried using the software colour filters in the camera too.

Please excuse my lack of grammar punctuation and spelling I'm extremely dyslexic.
 
Hello, welcome to the forum :wave:

With or without colour filters a black and white image will be just that..... Black and white. The filter may effect the tones / contrast (i think) but it won't introduce colour.

Is there a particular effect you are trying to achieve?
 
Regardless of taking pictures in B&W, the sensor will always shoot in colour, its then post processing (in camera or off camera) that then desaturates the image. The colour filters come in because they only allow the selective colour through, so if there is lots of colour then the filter will pick out the colour of the filter more, thus making it more obvious on the black and white image.

Hth.
 
Hello Nick and thank you for the welcome. Yes the effect I would like to master is the selection of a certain colour in a B&W photo for example a B&W photo of my back yard and every thing in B&W except the lawn which is mostly green ( there are some brown dead patches) but I would really like to learn that :)
 
Ah, are you wanting selective colour?

This is done with a colour photo, other than the selected area, the image is then changed to B&W off the camera in an image editor like Photoshop.
 
So what I'm gathering is that I'd have to photoshop the picture to get the effect I want? And that really colour filters have no effect on B&W photos as the trickery inside the cameras brains turns the picture into B&W no matter the filter used?
 
Red or orange filters can be used to darken blue skies and they can also reduce the visibility of zits in portraits.
On Cokin's site, there are sample pics showing the effects and there's a relatively recent thread where another filter simulation site is linked.
 
Thank you for the link but I do have PSP x3 and I've not used gimp before :/
 
When you're photographing in B+W, coloured filters change the way certain colours are rendered into shades of grey. They're handy for separating tones that may otherwise look similar in B+W.
I've never actually tried this on the dSLR using filters in front of the lens and I suspect I'm not alone in preferring to shoot colour and process afterwards, or at least use the software filter pack in-camera.

A more in-depth and informative thread with some good examples:
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=455169

Edit: Ah, selective colour's what you're after, I typed as the other replies came in!
 
Last edited:
Csayce said:
So what I'm gathering is that I'd have to photoshop the picture to get the effect I want? And that really colour filters have no effect on B&W photos as the trickery inside the cameras brains turns the picture into B&W no matter the filter used?
Click to expand...

They do have an effect, but the photo is still black and white with no colour - it joists picks a colour out and makes it more obvious before changing to B&W. But yes, you need to process the image to achieve selective colour.
 
Thank you for the link I shall take a look at it right now also thank you to every one who's posted their opinions I reall appreciate you're help.
 
Ah! I see that the OP's after colour popping (also known as selective colour). A forum search will throw up loads of threads and advice.
 
Csayce said:
Thank you for the link but I do have PSP x3 and I've not used gimp before :/
Click to expand...

You can achieve the same thing in PSP. Just search Google for PSP selective colour tutorials.

Gimp is just a free photo editor.
 
I'm just reading the thread that Mike gave me the link too. Hopefully it will give me an explanation on how to carry ths out in PSP if not I'll YouTube it.
 
Thank you nick this is very handy I'm also seeing from the thread that mike gave that there are plugins for PSP that also help with B&W photos which are free to D/ load and use so with the help of you all I should be able to at least get a grasp of how to do this again thank you to all who've posted this has really made my day some thing to read and a new skill to learn I'm quite excited to try this now *thumbs up* and cheers.
 
From what I remember of PSP you should be able to use most if not all of the Photoshop plugins (at least yo used to be able to - not used PSP in a while now) there are plenty sites around doing free ones as well as paid for.
 
Thank you for you're comment I've followed a link that was posted here in the thread and I've seen there are indeed free plug ins and yes they should work but after further reading I think I'm going to try and steer clear of these and use the manual settings from what I've read this seems to be the true way to go and not relay on some one else's idea of B&W but I will keep them in mind.
 
A decent plug-in should give you control over most aspects much like the channel mixer does in PS. The latest incarnations of PSE have a good B&W converter with a few presets which can be tailored to suit the user's tastes.
 
Csayce said:
Hello I'm quite new to photography and over the last few months I've been buying all manner of equipment for my cameras.

Now I have many different coloured filters both solid and gradual and my question is based in this when buying some of the coloured filters there were explanations that this colour would work well when shooting B&W.

So after buying these colours and using them in colour photos and though I'm no where near let's say 60% sure yet of what I'm doing with the colour filters I'm still enjoying the effects I can get with them.

But my main reason for starting this thread was how do colour filters work when taking B&W photos? As when I've tried and for example I've used a green filter and taken a B&W photo of an area that has grass in the shot the photo still shows a B&W picture with no green???

Would some one please explain what it is I may be doing wrong or what I should be doing to use these coloured filters with a B&W photo.

I'm using a canon 500D with various lenses.

By the way I've also tried using the software colour filters in the camera too.

Please excuse my lack of grammar punctuation and spelling I'm extremely dyslexic.
Click to expand...

a red filter won't let much green or blue through so these will appear dark. It will let reds, oranges etc. through, so these will appear light.
 
Thank you mark for the link I shall take a look I'm currently exploring some other forums as well to help me with this subject and I appreciate all the help I've been getting from *** like yourself. Cheers
 
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