Orange filters, a technical discussion

Scoo · Joined: 16 Jun 2009 Posts: 62 Location: Finland

I suppose this doesn't really fit the B&W gallery section, please move around if needed.

I have too many filters, the same thing as with lenses Wink

Mostly they're for black and white photography but I also have a couple ones for colour/digital photography.

Recently after looking over a couple of old posts at photo.net I saw a suggestion for a deep orange filter. This made me look over an eBay acquisition from the last summer, a set of East German (Arnz Jena according to the seller but unmarked on the rims) 58mm filters. One of them is orange, and a deep one at that (in comparison with others, see below).

[got my tired, cranky five month old daughter in my lap now so I'll keep it short without the deeper discussion I thought of a minute ago]

Here's a shot of all the orange filters I own, note the differences in density (especially between the Hoyas that are marked the same, still look like yellow-orange and orange):

Top left to bottom right:
62mm marked "Hoya O (G)"
58mm ditto
52mm ditto (different though from the other, slightly denser/darker)
58mm Arnz Jena, old-style filter [thick ring, colour gel cemented between two outer glass plates], unmarked. Dark orange, orange-red/red-orange.
52mm Nikkor-branded Nikon O56, noticeable denses than the others, almost on par with the orange-red Arnz Jena.
40,5mm Soviet-made OC-12 (OS-12 in the latin alphabet, here is a handy table for converting Soviet filter designations to western equivalents: http://www.ygofg.com/Cross.htm), on par with the 52mm G)

The differences are a bit difficult to spot in this shot, white balance was off and this is PS auto-colour talking, the two densest ones are really dark/deep orange not red.

Generally it appears that the Hoyas are light orange/yellow-orange and not "medium" orange. What I really wonder if the O56 is really supposed to be that dark (as it's supposed to be a medium orange filter) or if dark orange is then really really dark.

Judging from these specimens, the 52mm Hoya O/G and the Soviet OS-12 look more like medium or "pure" orange filters. As the weather is pretty much overcast for quite some time here I can't do a proper comparison with B&W film, looking at them doesn't tell the whole story.

martinsmith99 · Expire: 2013-11-18

I've moved it here as I think it's the best fit. I hope that's okay?

I've only just started with B&W film photography and bought myself some yellow, orange & red filters. I'm really liking the orange & red and the effect they have on the sky. I also attach a cpl if I can get enough shutter speed.

I'm not sure if they fade with age or the tones were changed depending on when they were manufactured.

Scoo · Joined: 16 Jun 2009 Posts: 62 Location: Finland

This is a better place, thanks.

I've seen a slight difference in hue in a contemporary multicoated (HMC-branded )Hoya X1 light green filter and a 1960s one, the 1960s one is slightly "bluer". A 1970s-1980s (?) Hoya X1 filter on the other hand is exactly like the modern one.

But, in reality I don't think that the different hues matter that much (unless one is really nitpicky and examine one's negatives with a densitometer and such), this is more something one can trouble oneself with when people offload their filter collections by the dozen on evilbay and it's easy to amass too many filters Smile

As for the example image above, the Hoya ones ought to be the same (seems like modern ones, the 62mm was new old stock), as for the rest I don't have other samples from the same manufacturer to compare them with (I bet maker variances make up most of the differences).

gsxronax · Joined: 27 Jan 2011 Posts: 5

Scheimpflug · Expire: 2011-11-18