>
> OK, help me out there... been playing with filtered BW (in camera) for
> kicks. The "help" button on the D90 says Green for restrained skin
> tones, and caucasian skin looks horrible. Says Yellow for more
> contrast in sky (or something like that), and that yields the best
> looking portraits. Am I missing something? or am I photographing the
> wrong skin tones under the wrong lighting (incand. for the most part).
>
I understand your confusion. Let's back away from the digital camera very
slowly...
To understand what is going on, we must illustrate with the color-wheel
using the three primary colors of Red, Blue and Yellow. The opposite color
to Red is Green. Opposite color of Yellow is Purple, the Opposite color of
Blue is Orange. When you place a colored filter on the lens it will lower
the brightness level of the opposite color as it literally is filtering out
(removing) that color.
So, let's think about skintones. Skin is pinkish/orangish with an
underlying red. If you place a red filter on the lens, the skin will
effectively raise in value, while any vegetation in the background will go
almost black. However, if you place a green filter on the lens, the skin
will darken and anything red will lighten. Lips go dark with green filters,
lips go nonexistant with red filters.
During the '40s, 50s and '60s, it was not uncommon to photograph men with
green filters (when using panochromatic film) to give them a more mascaline
appearance and maintain maximum texture in the faces. However, women were
frequently photographed with an orange or even red filter to raise the
skintones and give a smoother and more porceline appearance.
Unfortunately, Red filteration causes excessive shifting of tones in the
lips, eyes and sometimes hair-color. Makeup becomes very important to hold
the lips and to provide adequate modelling to the face. Yellow filters
raise the skintones slightly, but don't shift the lips. Orange is
frequently a nice compromise.
As mentioned, the color of filter used will raise the value of any matching
color in the scene. Let's say that a person has a nasty red scar across
their face. A green filter will darken that red scar and make it goulish.
A red filter may actually cause the scar to completely disappear. I use
orange filters on Ilford Delta 400 when photographing teenagers as this
combination will almost completely hide all zits and rashes.
I've attempted to mimick this in post-production, and it does work, but for
a combination of reasons, I've found that the affect is only half there as
compared to film. This is one area where I feel film responds better than
digital. In theory, it should be the same, but in practice it isn't.
Without a scientific explanation to back me up, I am going to surmise that
it has to do with the near-IR response characteristics of some films vs
digital.
AG
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