Hi John -
I'm not sure I really answered properly. For a start, here's Agfa's page on
Scala. There's a datasheet link to a .pdf at the bottom.
http://www.agfa.com/photo/products/film/professional/bwrevfilm/
On page 9 of this is Scala's spectral sensitivity curve. It looks like a
normal B&W negative film's response (opposite sense of course). So filters
should all work the same way as for run of the mill B&W (i.e. excluding
ortho, IR, extended red, etc.).
General rule of thumb: if you compensate for the filter (SLR metering does
this automatically) in a scene of mixed colors, a filter will brighten
similar colors and darken complementary colors. So a green will lighten
green and darken red.
Going from yellow to dark yellow to orange to red, the blue sky gets darker
and darker and white clouds remain white.
Watch out for situations where the scene contains mostly the color of your
filter or its complement. This will be like having a lot of white or black
in the scene, and you'll have to compensate. A look through the viewfinder
should tell you if the scene looks mostly light or dark through the filter.
Because this is slide film, you won't be able to compensate later.
If you're familiar with black and white, things should be pretty much normal
and I'm telling you this stuff unnecessarily. If you're not, you might want
to play around with a few rolls of B&W film and just get development and a
contact sheet done. It might work to get one of the C-41 B&W films (T400CN,
Kodak B&W+, Ilford XP2+, Konica 400 Monochrome) which your local color print
lab can process. Hint: unless they're amazing or have a digital print setup,
you might want to ask them to print with a light color shift of your choice
(e.g. blue or sepia), 'cause they probably won't nail it at neutral and
you're going to get some kind of color regardless. You might as well choose
it - to my eye, green and magenta don't really work (translated to less
neutral statement: they look gross). This will let you practice B&W
filtering for much less and with faster turnaround.
Shoot with a lens that provides good contrast and a red filter, and shots
with sky in them will be dramatic. My 21/3.5 (OM content) with a red filter
is great for buildings, bridges, etc. I've seen great people shots by David
Trattles. He shot unfiltered, often in low light pushing the film, and with
a 35 - but it wasn't an OM, poor man, just a Leica. :-)
Andrew
> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 22:03:37 -0400
> From: "John Hudson" <13874@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [OM] contrast filters in b & w photography
>
> Will a yellow filter on the lens achieve the same visual end result with
> black and white transparency film [in this case Agfa Scala] as it will with
> black and white negative film, namely darkening a blue sky and providing a
> greater degree of contrast with the white clouds than would otherwise be the
> case if no filter was used?
>
> Any tips and advice on using contrast filters with Agfa Scala will be
> appreciated.
>
> I have a couple of rolls of Scala and given the cost of the film and the
> cost of processing I want to minimise the degree of experimentation with
> contrast filters!
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|