How camera filters can affect your shots
Whether it’s in-camera or in post-processing, filters are the best way to control contrast and tone for creating striking black-and-white images
You may think that using filters for black-andwhite is a little ‘old hat’ – and in some ways you’d be right. You can easily replicate the effects of the colour filters below as long as you have a colour image (raw or JPEG) to start with. But the effects of two traditional filters – polarisers and neutral-density – are very difficult to replicate in Lightroom or Photoshop, so it’s much easier to use the real thing as you shoot.
POLARISER
This filter will help darken blue skies, and also remove reflections from non-metallic surfaces such as water. It can also give a slight boost in the overall contrast or your image. One final side-effect is that it cuts out one to two stops of light, allowing you to use longer shutter speeds.
ORIGINAL COLOUR
ere is the original colour image so you can see how each colour, such as the red/brown of the highland cow, the blues in the sky and the greens in the grass, react when you apply each of three filters…
RED FILTER
Red lightens the tones of the cow as this is orange/red, but it has darkened the blues in the sky and also added some contrast to the green/yellow grass in the foreground. This filter is useful for adding contrast to landscape images.
GREEN FILTER
Here the greens/yellows of the grass are lightened, but it has little effect on the sky or the cow. This filter is great for lightening foliage or can also be useful for darkening and adding contrast to skin tones in black-and-white portraits.
BLUE FILTER
Here the cow is almost reduced to black, while the sky is much lighter. This isn’t a commonly used filter for black-and-white shots, but it can be useful for emphasising the mood when you’re shooting in misty or hazy conditions.