Arista 100 // Bronica SQAI // Red Filter
If you didn’t already know, you can use color filters in your black and white photography to alter the look of your shots.
Or your color photography, but… I mean, you shouldn’t, unless you want to your photos to look like they were taken by Hal 9000 from 2001…which, hey, you do you, I’m not here to judge.
But when shooting black and white, using color filters can help you achieve some interesting results.
Today we’re going to be focusing on the red filter. For this, I used the Tiffen red 25 filter, my new Bronica SQAi, and a roll of Arista EDU 100.
Before I show the results, what should we expect from this filter?
Well, first of all we need to understand that Arista EDU 100 is a panchromatic film, so it registers every color of the visible light spectrum and then convert them to black and white in various tones. To use B&W filters well, you should understand complementary colors.
Simply put, a colored filter will let its own color pass through with ease and will block its complement. The colors that they let pass through will render “brighter” in the image—or as a lighter shade of grey. For instance, a very common example is if you're shooting a red rose with green leaves against a black background and use a 25A red filter, it will let red light through, making the rose light gray to white, and block green light (a complimentary color), making the leaves darker. Blues greens and purples are the ones that will have a harder time passing through the red filter and appear as darker shades of grey in your images.
So for this test, I took two photos of each composition—one without the red filter and one with the filter on. Every photo was taken on a tripod to ensure that the frame’s matched up perfectly and were taken seconds apart so the lighting should be consistent. If you thought about going off to shoot right then and there—boy do I have some other useful tips for you. Something to consider when using a red filter is that it cuts out a good deal of light—according to the online consensus, approximately 3 stops of light.
So after taking a meter reading of your scene without a filter, you’ll want to put on the filter and then add three stops either by opening our aperture or by slowing your shutter speed.
And just to note according to folks online, if you’re using this filter on a camera with through the lens metering like most 35mm SLR’s, the camera should be accurately adjusting for the filter so no need to add additional stops to that. As always with that kind of stuff it might be in your best interest to do a test with your specific camera and see if the TTL meter is actually adding the correct amount of stops.
For this test I kept a log of my camera setting so we can see this in action. Also these images you’re seeing are unedited from myself—straight from the lab—just to show off the true power of the red filter without any meddling.
This was the first photo on the roll—excuse the change in composition, I must have shifted the camera a bit when adjusting. Right off the bat we can see clear as day the difference in contrast—those blacks get darker and the highlights even get a little boost. Also for this test going forward I needed to make sure I shot each clear frame with enough leeway for me to open up 3 stops when adding the red filter. For this one, for whatever reason, I only opened 2 stops. Not sure why but that also might be contributing to the darker shadow areas.
For The rest of them I believe I opened three stops.
Here’s shot number two—again clear on the left and red filter on the right. Now when doing research on red filters, I saw that filtering red is also used to separate clouds from the sky. On a bright day, the blue sky can show in your photo as near-black while clouds stand out in punchy shades of dark gray. Maybe it was because it was colder than a day old dumpling outside, but I didn’t take any footage of what the sky looked like in this scene here. I seem to remember it being blue, which leads me to wonder why I didn’t get those results, but regardless, we do see the change in contrast with those buildings popping out way more than in the clear version. One things I’m unclear of is why the building in the foreground appears to have significantly more shadow detail than the clear image. As far as I remember, there wasn’t a change in lighting and that building was shrouded in shadow. Not sure. It’s one of life’s great mysteries.
I do prefer the filtered version of this though—popping those buildings away from the sky definitely adds some much needed dimension to the image.
Here we see the most change in the ground. We can see in the footage that it was a semi-dark grey and the red filter just accentuated the darkness of it. Like the last image, I do prefer the filtered version.
Here’s what it looked like in color.
After I finished this roll I had a moment where I was like—wait did I actually photograph anything that was red? It’d be pretty stupid of me not to include that in a video about the red filter. Luckily for me my instincts are better than my memory and I took a photo of this red tree sculpture on the highline in Manhattan. And here, we see—in my opinion—the most interesting and apparent difference. We see that filter in action on the right with the tree appearing white. To reiterate why that is, a colored filter will let its own color pass through and will block complementary colors. The colors that they pass through will render “brighter” in the image—or as a lighter shade of grey. So that’s why the red tree appears white against the darker brown brick building behind it. In the clear version, the image seems flatter and the tree almost blends into the background.
Up next is a photo I thought was going to be cooler than it turned out. It’s just some wood beams sticking out of the water. I also messed up the focus on the red filter version. We see pretty much the same results here though—some nice increase in the contrast and some better texture coming out of the water.
And last but not least we have this. Because I wanted to keep the aperture the same to keep the same DOF, I adjusted the shutter speed. I actually did that a couple of times in the previous photos. So, because of that, like I mentioned earlier I had to have most of these shot using a tripod. If your clear exposure reading has you shooting an f/4 @ 1/60th, and your lens only opens to a 2.8, you wouldn’t be able to get the three stops necessary for the red filter by opening the aperture. So, then you’re left with adjusting the shutter speed, which in most cases I actually think is a better option given that red filters make for a great companion to landscape photography. And having a smaller iris would help you get as much of your landscape in focus as possible. But something I discovered on this test is the camera shake on the bronica can be pretty heavy, even on the tripod. So some of these photos look a little wonky because of the longer exposure times and the mirror slap causing the camera to shake little bit. But for purposes of this, we’re mainly concerned about that we get from the red filter. What we saw across the board was increased contrast, some darker shadows, and we saw what it will do to any reds within your image. Something else to note, that wasn’t really applicable to this test, is that red filters are known to cut through fog, mist, and thin cloud layers. The red filter is claimed to eliminate almost all forms of atmospheric haze, to help clear up distant landscapes. And also, while I dont have any portraits here, textures, such as the brick tiles in architecture or the fine details of human skin will look much grittier and more detailed through a red filter. Giving a nice weathered look to your image.
And that about covers it.
