black & white photography a basic manual

I kept my aperture the same and just moved my shutter speed accordingly.

I also found this helpful for exposing, since blue and green need the same overexposure (+2) and red needs 1.5 stop more (+3.5). To keep my life easy, I shot alphabetically (blue, green, red). You will want to remember the order you shoot your filters, so you can place each image into the corresponding color channel later in Photoshop. Trichromatic color image made from 3 medium format b&w film images Medium format b&w image made with a red filter, image with a green filter, and image with a blue filter So once I found my initial reading, I knew to overexpose accordingly. I found that the blue and green filters needed about 2 stops of overexposure, and the red filter needed about 3.5 stops of overexposure. This is actually what I did, and I only did it the one time. If you use a handheld meter that has a bulb in feature, simply place the filter over the meter and take your light reading. You really only need to do this once to determine how many stops to overexpose for each filter.

You can also meter for each filter by placing the filter over the lens and metering to see how much you’d need to increase exposure for any given filter. I meter using my internal reflective meter, so I will point the camera into something middle grey, and then put my camera in position on the tripod. You will be taking each of the three images with a different filter, so you will have to meter separately for each image to account for the different filters. Trichromatic color image made from 3 35mm b&w film images 35mm b&w image made with a red filter, image with a green filter, and image with a blue filter Set up your camera on the tripod, ideally with a remote trigger, but this isn’t super necessary, it’s just nice to have. If the subject is moving, the final image will have a separation of colors in the area with movement. You will need your subject to stay still while you take three separate images and put on three different filters. Beware that the process will take a few seconds. Ideally you’d use these filters: #25 Red, #58 Green, and #47 Blue (make sure you get the right filter size for your lens), but I bought cheap flash gels just to have my hand at it.Ĭhoose a subject.Here are a few things you’ll need to try trichromatic photography on film.

Related: Using Color Filters with Black and White Film Supplies

Black & white photography a basic manual