Do color filters effect digital cameras?

I was looking through the drawers for a UV filter for my Nikon D300 and found an old orange Nikon filter. Does using it with the camera in B&W mode have the same effect as it does with film? I will try it later but wanted some feedback first. I suspect it has little effect on a digital camera.

Good question - will try as well. In the meantime .. Link Getting Black and White From Color: How To Use Color Filters To Create Monochrome Images

If my goal is b&w, I prefer using a camera's b&w mode. Instant feedback and in the case of mirrorless cameras, previewing the photo in b&w. Gets you into a b&w mood.

You would have to turn Auto WB off, naturally, because the camera would try desperately to offset the filter's effect. I suspect that the orange filter is intended to use indoor film in sunlight. It is not a color normally associated with B&W for contrast effects. You would have to view in B&W mode to judge the effect in real time.

 

That said, there is no compelling reason to use contrast or color correction filters unless the camera is strictly monochromatic. Their effect can be emulated very well in software on a color image before rendering in B&W, and adjusted to suit your taste and desired effect. In fact, you can't simply de-colorize a color image without creating a very flat, unappealing image.

I put a Canon FD 15mm f2.8 fisheye on my Fuji X-A1, set the camera filter to B/W, lock white-balance, and set the lens build-in filter to red R1.

 

Unfortunately I barely notice a difference. When I set the camera to take colour pictures, there is an extreme red cast it can not correct for, even by changing the white balance.

The red "filter effects" on my Fuji can have a bad effect on b&w mode. The sky at the top of the frame can go nearly black and lighten significantly by mid frame. The transition area can look ugly. The orange filter on the Nikon did nothing positive that I can see on this foggy morning. Switching to a color mode, the orange filter overwhelmed auto white balance and made an orange photo. The 50mm Nikkor has a well recessed front element and doesn't really need a protection filter.

My photography mood includes both color and black and white. Each is always in the background or foreground of my consciousness. I tend to see through to the b/w result but shoot in color to give myself flexibility when converting to black and white. I generally know when a shot is going to wind up in b/w when I’m taking it, but am pleasantly surprised sometimes that something winds up working better in either color or b/w than I originally thought. I liking leaving room for those kinds of possibilities.

 

I shoot RAW and in fully manual exposure mode, maximizing my choices in the moment. Shooting in color for me seems consistent with that. I mainly use the camera’s preview screen to check for blown highlights or blocked shadows and not for nuanced aesthetic choices, which I prefer to make in my mind's eye and then later when looking at a bigger monitor. There's a lot of control and subtlety possible with a conversion to black and white from color.

 

It sounds like you're having some difficulties that might be solved by adjusting your work flow but I also understand the challenge of being able to get better results than you've been getting from the method you seem to prefer.

No, just found an old filter in a drawer and wondered what it would do on a digital camera. I really do like seeing a black and white photo in the viewfinder before pressing the button.

If you are using color filter within the normal gamut capture of the sensor then in theory you should be able to get the same effect with channel mixing in photoshop and are wasting your time. Using a #25 red filter for instance is no different than tossing out the green and blue channels with one exception: the heavy red filter doesn't take into account bayer AA filtering and you can get some nasty aliasing. So, tossing out the green / blue channels in a photo editor should yield slightly better results than a filter on a digital camera.

 

In practice it's a not so clean cut. Digital camera sensors aren't perfect bandpass filters and have their own limits. Why I constantly harp we need more capture channels than RGB at the sensor level, especially to help keep red/orange/magenta blowout in check (cough 60D / 7D cough).

 

With a milder filter the camera's white balance will try to balance it out. If it's too extreme you'll get all kinds of weird crossover problems.

If you use a Leica Monochrom where there IS no color, obviously external filters are the way to go. If you’re using a color camera that is capable of setting itself to “monochrome” mode (even if the raw still has color), and the in-camera displayed jpeg is in black and white, then external filters would show you what you are getting and perhaps guide you to the solution you want, if you can’t visualize it through your experience (which truth is, I often can’t). Of course you’d be sacrificing your raw’s ability to convert in a more sophisticated way. you’d almost be better off jpeg only in monochrome. If you did that, then you have essentially a Leica Monochrom and filters work exactly as they used to, except you can see what they look like immediately.

 

For filters designed for color photography, you don’t need color correction filters (done in camera). Neutral density, partial ND filters, polarizers, and so on work exactly as they should. I guess you could use a warming filter (81A) but you probably would be better off picking a different white balance. That said if your camera was prone to a bluish sort of color, it would be interesting to see what an 81A would do.

I suspect that the orange filter is intended to use indoor film in sunlight. It is not a color normally associated with B&W for contrast effects.

 

I have used orange filters(#16 and #21) with B&W film. The effect is somewhere between yellow and red filters. The #16 and #21 are cut-off filters, just like reds and yellows.

 

Of course, the 85 series filters, which also look orange, are a different story.

The cut-off of an orange filter might be in between the red and green sensor filters, such that you couldn't get the same effect digitally processing the image.

 

 

You could probably get close enough, though.

 

The traditional use for red, orange, and yellow filters is to darken the sky, and emphasize clouds.

I suspect that you get close enough with digital processing of the normal color image, into a black and white print.

 

Also, with the filter you will have some idea of what the final look will be through the viewfinder.

Though you might just look through the filter, then shoot without it, expecting to be able to get

a similar result.

When I got my first digital body I tried using traditional B&W filters (not polarizers), shooting in the monochrome mode, then shooting without the filters in color but having the camera apply its built-in B&W filters. Part 1 was useless compared to their effect on film. Part 2 worked as designed, but I found that the best approach was using post production sliders in software, as I shot in RAW.