Heya fellow dive photographers!
Yes this is a film specific question and yes I'm aware of the myriad of digital options. This is not about convincing me to just shoot digital - I already do that. I wanted to try something different. Above the water I've been getting back into film in a huge way (up to large format, which one CAN take underwater but not without a ton of work, but I digress) and that includes making darkroom prints from black and white film. I've been wanting to marry the two hobbies together. So as a bit of an experiment. So I got myself a Nikonos V with a 28mm lens. No strobes (yet anyway).
I have access to clear freshwater diving in places and I think black and white would be really fun there. But I also want to take my Nikonos to blue water and in fact that'll be where I first test it out in a few short weeks.
On the digital side, I shoot video on my GoPro Hero 3+ Black with the Backscatter system with Protune on and I color correct and edit in Davinci Resolve. I'm well used to using mostly the Red DIVE filter in blue water but sometimes use the yellow when I'm doing a shallow dive. This is mostly for video though I'll shoot an occasional photo with it. It works well for a small and compact system. I gather the yellow and red filters are roughly equivalent to the standard YEL8 and RED25 filters I use for my black and white photography on the surface.
This was a long build up for my actual question but for the folks that have shot film underwater, black and white in particular, do colored filters help underwater? Do they work the same way as they do above? Namely I'd expect these filters would darken the blue water to a degree - red having a very large impact.
Asking because I was thinking of using a YEL8 filter just to try and make subjects pop a bit more. I think a RED25, being a 3-stop filter, would be too slow - that gets me down to an effective film speed of 25 if I don't push the film and that sounds too slow. At that point may as well use strobes (which I don't yet have and avoid filters anyway. A YEL8 is only a 1-stop (in testing with the V's light meter, it may even be more like 2/3rds of a stop, though I'd imagine the water will play a role here).
Thoughts or suggestions here with respect to shooting film with filters? As an aside, if this does work out I am planning on getting some strobes and perhaps trying a color film like Ektar next time. I know a lot of divers in the film heyday used to shoot slide but Ektar seems like it would be a great fit being a modern high contrast color negative film (allowing for some level of white balance control more than slides can provide).
Yes this is a film specific question and yes I'm aware of the myriad of digital options. This is not about convincing me to just shoot digital - I already do that. I wanted to try something different. Above the water I've been getting back into film in a huge way (up to large format, which one CAN take underwater but not without a ton of work, but I digress) and that includes making darkroom prints from black and white film. I've been wanting to marry the two hobbies together. So as a bit of an experiment. So I got myself a Nikonos V with a 28mm lens. No strobes (yet anyway).
I have access to clear freshwater diving in places and I think black and white would be really fun there. But I also want to take my Nikonos to blue water and in fact that'll be where I first test it out in a few short weeks.
On the digital side, I shoot video on my GoPro Hero 3+ Black with the Backscatter system with Protune on and I color correct and edit in Davinci Resolve. I'm well used to using mostly the Red DIVE filter in blue water but sometimes use the yellow when I'm doing a shallow dive. This is mostly for video though I'll shoot an occasional photo with it. It works well for a small and compact system. I gather the yellow and red filters are roughly equivalent to the standard YEL8 and RED25 filters I use for my black and white photography on the surface.
This was a long build up for my actual question but for the folks that have shot film underwater, black and white in particular, do colored filters help underwater? Do they work the same way as they do above? Namely I'd expect these filters would darken the blue water to a degree - red having a very large impact.
Asking because I was thinking of using a YEL8 filter just to try and make subjects pop a bit more. I think a RED25, being a 3-stop filter, would be too slow - that gets me down to an effective film speed of 25 if I don't push the film and that sounds too slow. At that point may as well use strobes (which I don't yet have and avoid filters anyway. A YEL8 is only a 1-stop (in testing with the V's light meter, it may even be more like 2/3rds of a stop, though I'd imagine the water will play a role here).
Thoughts or suggestions here with respect to shooting film with filters? As an aside, if this does work out I am planning on getting some strobes and perhaps trying a color film like Ektar next time. I know a lot of divers in the film heyday used to shoot slide but Ektar seems like it would be a great fit being a modern high contrast color negative film (allowing for some level of white balance control more than slides can provide).