I found an old red filter in one of my camera bags today and thought I’d try it out with the remaining film in the camera. For a while now I’ve been wondering what differences it can make to black and white photography, I’ve read about what it does and why it was popular before the days of photoshop, but I figured I’d just make my own test and shoot two identical shots to see the difference with and without the filter (I was looking for ways to finish the roll off, haha)
I have to say I was quite surprised by the boost in contrast it gives. I never imagined it’d be that much.
The example shots below probably didn’t have the best subject matter or setting to see the full advantage of a red filter but I took some photos afterwards that really benefited from it (will post them later). I tried to stitch them together in the pic below. It looks more drastic when I export this jpeg from photoshop than the individual scans suggest. There should be a little more detail in the bottom right shadow even though that area is very dark in the red filter example below.
I don’t think this will be the last tie I use this filter.