Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/05/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Edmond Kim wrote: > > Hello all, > > With all this talk of filters, I realized that I dont use filters on my > lens. I mainly shoot black and white.. well, actually, I've never put color > film in my M2. Is it common for people to shoot black and white without any > filter at all? If they do use one, what is a good general purpose filter? I > read that some recommend a yellow (which? light, medium, dark?) filter and > others a yellow-green one. Also, the lens I'm using is a 40 summicron, and > I think it's supposed to use a series 5.5. Does B+W still make Series 5.5 > filters? I think those are the questions I have.. > > Thanks all! I think Black and white work invites filtering more than color. There are plenty of warm enough transparency films out now so that warming filters are collecting dust. Color neg never needed it, I've tried them and it just screws them up making printing impossible. Cooling filters were almost never used except my hard core color temperature meter using people. As you say Polarizers are great tools but a pain on a rangefinder camera. Pros and very serious others have to have their act together as to counteracting florecents. Sometimes magenta filters are thus used instead of traditional FLD or FLB's and green gels over the flash. I like to shoot my color with bare naked glass 99.99% of the time. Using a Nikon I'll fool with polarizors in color but that's really getting rare. I never look at a scene (Black and White landscape) with out first deciding what type of filtration to use. I might verge on too much but landscapes go by you in a blur and I like mine with a little sock-it-to-me. By the time you take off your sunglasses and get out of your truck what have you got? Another better artist than myself could be into the austerity of bare naked glass, For me there is nothing "real" about black and white in the first place so why not give'm something to thimk about? But as I'm emphasizing extremes the quickest way a black and white shot will have no value is with a washed out to even white sky. You need to retain tone and I like fluffy little cotton tufts and strands in the stratosphere. But hey that's me. BHTM Mark Rabiner 11751 to you buddy