On May 19, 2005, at 8:39 AM, Ann Sanfedele wrote:
Now I can.... but do they work the same way? that is have the same effect?
A red filter on my darkside PRO 1 and camera set to BW acheive the same effect as a red filter on my lx?
Approximately, yes, depending upon the sensor's spectral sensitivity.
In general, to work B&W with a digital camera you get a lot more control of the rendering by capturing in RGB color and then using image processing software to mix channels down to B&W. You can then adjust the RGB values to emulate the response of your favorite B&W films plus all the Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue, etc traditional B&W filters. There are also plug-ins available that have pre-canned such adjustments (and film grain effects of popular emulsions) giving you a lot more flexibility than the in-camera B&W capture option.
The in-camera B&W capture option is generally doing the effective equivalent of a Channel Mixer with 20% Red, 75% Green and 5% Blue settings in most cameras I've played with that have one.
Without getting into to much technobabble - what about a polarizer?
Polarizers work as polarizers always do. The effect might not be easily visible as you rotate the filter on the Pro-1's EVF because the EVF is somewhat low resolution ... I always found it easier with an EVF camera to manage a polarizer the same way I did for rangefinder cameras: rotate the filter looking through it with your eye, check the orientation of an index mark, then fit it and place the index where it ought to be.
UV filter?
Digital sensors have very little to no UV sensitivity and white balance adjustments take care of warming up the blue tint from photos taken under open blue sky. A UV filter basically has no useful function on a digital camera as a result ... The only useful function for this class of filter (UV, Skylight 1a, etc) is for occasionally protecting the front element of the lens when you're shooting in conditions of flying debris or water, when best resolution and flare prevention are secondary priorities.
ND filters, both full and partial, remain useful. I use an 8 or 9 stop ND filter occasionally for extended time exposure effects. I don't know how much the ND function in the Pro-1 nets you.
Godfrey
