B/W filters w/ Canon 30D ??? Help!!!

[bodynmotion]

I am going to take some photos of friend who is pregnant this coming weekend. In 30 days, I am going to take photos of the baby. She wants all black and white. I have heard that Red or Green filters offer better contrasts and shading. I am new to portrait photography. I will be using a 105mm Sigma f/2.8 lens or my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. I need help on this. The only filters I have ever used are the Circular Polarizers.

[skfields]

My (very limited) understanding of red and green filters was that they work for black and white film, but do not translate well to the digital world. Someone else might have some more info on that.

My personal preference when shooting digital that I intend to convert to black and white is to shoot RAW then convert it in post-processing (then I always have the option of going color later). If you are using photoshop, it has a "channel mixer" function that will mimic the effects of red and green filters for black and white photography. Here is a fairly good demonstration of the channel mixer function: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...lack-white.htm

[metagore]

I'll second that. :)

I find it's much better to capture all the color and then use the channel mixer to do the conversion. You end up with more flexibility because you're not stuck with a single 'red' filter, you can vary the intensity of the 'red' or shift it slightly towards orange if it looks better that way.

The link above is a great resource.

There are also some actions available from TLR that have a nice set of defaults http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/photoshop-tools.htm. You can use the actions to learn and tweak to your own needs.

[AndrewCCM]

Are you talking about the B/W Picture Styles that simulate various filters? If so, just shoot RAW, then bring the files into DPP (that came with your camera) and choose which one looks best. You can change your picture styles to whatever you want via DPP after the fact.

I. however, typically use my own color to b/w process in Photoshop, RSP or Lightroom. YOu can shoot RAW+JPG and the JPG will take on the picture style chosen. You may actually like the results from it. The B/W with Yellow filter sometimes gives me a nice looking image. In your case, I'd shoot both and that way have the most flexibility.

Hope this helps.

[Stephen H]

Even on B&W, red is normally used for outdoor shots to make clouds stand out, and green normally isn't used that much, period. When shooting portraits indoors, filters aren't used that much, because the drop 3 stops or so off the speed and you normally need all the speed you can get.

If you happen to have a color filter available, put it on, then go shoot a shot, then try to adjust it back to "normal" color. In many cases, it simply can't be done. Meaning, if you shoot shots with raw, as described above, you can produce them as color and/or B&W. But if you shoot through a darkish filter, you're probably stuck with the B&W version.

[johnastovall]

Don't use filters when shooting. Show raw and use either in your raw converter or Photoshop to do a conversion which will simulate a filter or film stock. There are plug-ins you can get for this. Some are in this thread. You can see examples of this in my B&W folio where I used C1 and the JFI profiles for various filters and film stocks. Here is a red filter #3 example followed by the color version.