articles/Landscape/themonochromespecial-page5

The Monochrome Special - part 5 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Tom Lee Published 01/04/2009

Paying compliments to complements

- the filter etiquette

Long before digital photography, only mono film was available as it predated colour film by some time. The monochrome photographer was faced with an inability to easily control the way that sky (in particular) was rendered into the final print. Sky contains a lot of blue light, a wavelength to which the original negative emulsions were particularly sensitive. The result was 'washed out' featureless skies in landscapes, along with haze from reflected blue light in the atmosphere.

The solution was to place a yellow filter on the lens. This blocks the 'complementary' colour (blue) and prevents the blue light from unduly exposing the sky in the image. The result is slightly deeper tones in the whites of the clouds and darker 'blue' in the holes in the cloud. This, then, is the origin of the expression complementary filter - the complementary colour is the one that is darkened. Thus yellow darkens blue, red darkens cyan, etc.

A downside of the complementary filter was that although red creates a dramatically dark sky, it tends to render foliage far too dark and unrealistic. Similarly, if a person in a landscape was wearing a green jacket, the detail would be obliterated by the orange filter. One of the great benefits of digital conversion is that the filter effect can be applied then but masked out in areas where it is not required.

Regular contributors to Professional Imagemaker, Paul McMullin and Paul Gallagher and both devotees of the Lee Filter Systems which can be viewed at ww.leefilters.com. They make complementary filters along with graduated and polarising filters for most professional camera types including medium and large format.

• The Monochrome Special page 1
  
• The Monochrome Special page 2
  
• The Monochrome Special page 3
  
• The Monochrome Special page 4
  
• The Monochrome Special page 5
  
• The Monochrome Special page 6
  
• The Monochrome Special page 7
  

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