How to Shoot… Black & White – Coloured Filters and Depth of Field

Coloured filters

Traditional black & white photographers would use coloured filters in front of their lenses to change the contrast and tone of the image. By using a range of Red, Orange, Blue, Yellow and Green filters, certain colours are filtered more than others causing them to appear differently on the final image – and, of course, still in monochrome. A yellow filter is popular for portraits, while orange and red filters create harsher contrast turning blue skies almost to black. Green filters are also popular with landscape photographers looking to separate shades of green in their image; blue is used mainly to decrease contrast. These filters can all be applied to digital cameras; however, their effects can usually be easily replicated in editing software.

 This is the same black & white image with different coloured filters applied afterwards in software.

Depth of field

Focus can be used to concentrate the eye on a certain area of an image and this technique can be very handy in a black & white image. By using a large aperture (small number), a long lens, or by getting close to your subject, your depth of field can be kept very small; allowing you to keep your subject sharp, while all surroundings disappear into a blur.