Final touches
All this talk of old school film and cameras reminded me of a skill that I once had and took for granted. I just remembered after downloading the Lightroom film presets and playing around with them. Ove asked if I had solarized a particular photo.
Well, no. I didn’t. While in Lightroom I remembered what I used to do to black and white film to get dramatic skies. In my bag I always carried about 2 red filters, a Wratten 25 and Wratten 29, if I remember correctly. These filters were very deep red blocked out blue and cyan light, for the most part. Even back then, I shot most of my stuff on a tripod, so the extra stop or two that I needed for the filters was not an issue. What these filters did was to give dramatic skies. Since it would block all of the cyan light attempting to come through, it would render the skies black, as in the photo on yesterday’s post.
Now, I can do this post process by using the sliders in Lightroom under Grayscale mix. Simply pulling the blue slider all the way to the left makes my sky become very dark and dramatic. I used to carry a green filter as well. If I saw a scene where I wanted the grass to become light, with respect to the other colors, I applied the green filter. It blocked other colors and allowed green light through. Again, all I have to do now is move the green slider to the right to get more green, left for less (darker).
I don’t use color filters anymore because there is no need to. They don’t work well on digital cameras anyway, but I’m glad that that is still there in LR. It just gives me a way continue to experiment with my black and white photos in the digital realm.
For the above shot I pulled back the green sliders a bit to make the grass a little bit darker. When I saw this shot, again from my little field across the street, I had an idea of what I wanted to accomplish. A little bit of slider movement, burning here, dodging there, all in Lightroom, and I had what I wanted.
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Beautiful image, Paul. I agree that those sliders in Lightroom are like gold.
Great infro, here.
I don’t use filters on the camera anymore save my Hoya Pro 1 Digital UV filter.
I’m still of the school where you leave a UV or skylight filter on the lens all the time to protect the lens.
infro = info
Wonderful image Paul. I’ve not used the filters in LR yet but now I have to. Thanks!!
I agree that, while there is a huge debate about the use of ANY filter in front of a lens, I’d rather clean a filter than the lens, and I’d rather replace a scratched filter than the lens.
Just took another gander at this image, Paul. Really simple and lovely.
The yield from that little field continues to impress. This makes a tree lover very happy. What a great job of bringing the bark to life. Lovely, lovely.
I am a bitter refuge from Lightroom. It’s a boring, but not pretty story. However, between ACR and the black and white adjustments in CS3, I have a great time playing with sliders. See, it’s posts such as this one that help me not to worry too much about having missed out on film. I watch my images emerge gradually in the digital darkroom and no headache afterward.
While I’m filling up your comment section—I’m pleased to find that I have some agreement on keeping that filter in front of the lens. Although I take good care of my gear, I am the world’s worst about forgetting to put the lens cap on before placing the camera in a bag. Of course the bags are all padded, still I prefer some protection in front of that lens.
Ah, so that was Lightroom! It was the scrub that fooled me, it was so whitish and the sky was so dark that I thought you had solarized the picture. Me myself didn’t use the dramatic red filters but the more modest orange one. Slowly I start to regret I sold that F2…
I use Apple’s Aperture which is like Lightroom in most, I guess, and I simply love those sliders too! It’s really easy to simulate different filters. However, usally I don’t use them for b/w but goes with Photoshop. I’m more used with it, I guess, and you have a few more tools in Photoshop than Aperture.
@Anita: Please fill up my comment section anytime!
I love it!!! As for filters on the front of the lens, I never use them. Lenses are so very scratch resistant that the UV lens seems to be superfluous, so I never use them. Hmmm, superfluous … I like that word. 
@Chris/Anita: Thanks for the compliment on the photo. I’m a tree hugger/lover as well! I had thought about doing my SoFoBoMo on exclusively trees; however, Juha is already doing that! You’ll see more from the field across the street, though. There are so many possibilities in that little lot.
There is little need for filters these days…Except for the UV and polarizer I don’t typically use any filters. ND filters can come in handy, but I don’t like the ones I have at the moment. I usually end up cheating and stacking to polarizers…not the best idea but it will work. I like how you can use Lightroom to easily mimic Grad ND filters, that can be very useful.
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