Using filters for black and white film (T-Max 400) on the Nikonos V

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m00dawg

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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).
 
Just got back from my trip using the Nikonons V and thought I'd share some of my thoughts, and perhaps a pic or two. So first it was SO DAMN FUN to use it. Very different from a digital camera - even more so than comparing film and digital on the surface. For those not in the know, it isn't a range finder nor does it auto-focus. It shoots in full manual or aperture priority mode (you pick the aperture, it selects the shutter speed). You focus and set the aperture manually on the front of the lens.

Primarily that meant I was zone focusing and trying to keep the aperture as small as I could - typically around f8 or f11. It was a cloudy day so that is about the best I could get with T-Max 400 and no strobes. This kept me at decent shutter speeds, though I had a good chunk of blurry photos. This was mostly due to missing focus. Currents were rather strong on the days I dove so trying to get rapid shots was a bit challenging. The best shots were in lesser currents or when I was behind the reef where I had time to focus.

And that's where it was very rewarding. Much like film on the surface, it was nice to slow down and study what I was looking at. This was more important because I used black and white on purpose (partly to try it and partly because I had no strobes which meant shooting color underwater would have resulted in lots of blue). Not all shots worked, unsurprisingly, but the ones that did I'm pretty proud of. Taking black and white to a literal sea of color was a fun exercise.

Note I haven't said a thing about a filter. I ended up bringing a YEL8 filter with me but largely wasn't able to use it because of the cloudy day and the need for small apertures. On the shots I did use, there is a small but notable difference. A YEL15 (orange) filter would have been better I think. The main problem is not having enough light to use them so in the future I will probably not use the filter all that much unless I know I'll have time to compose where I can better judge distance and use larger apertures.

The other issue is the filter holder with the Nikonos V caused some vignetting with the 28mm UW lens I used. I had the filter mounted inside the mount so that may have been part of it, not sure. Not having a filter didn't really ruin any shots anyway. A darker water would have been nice but if I really want to try for that I can use graduated filters in Lightroom or dodging and burning in the traditional darkroom (I do plan on making some darkroom prints of these).

All told here's a few photos of the results:
 

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