Warming filters are they all the same?
One of the most used filters by photographers is a warming filter; Warming filters are used for scenic, portrait, travel, and even to improve color rendition of different brands of lenses. As you might know they come in many varying strengths and tonal qualities. If you currently have a skylight filter on the front of your lens, you are using a warming filter already. Skylights made here in USA and Japan are very similar. Skylight as you might have noticed have a slight pink tone to them. Tiffen's are called Skylight 1A and the Hoya's are Skylight 1B's, the Hoya's are slightly warmer. The German Skylights are called KR 1.5s and generally are slightly warmer than the US and Japan counter parts. The German ones shift the kelvin tone of the light plus 200 degrees. This shift by the way, is the same as 81A's. Just as a note we have customers that prefer to leave 81A's on their lenses instead of the skylights.
The number one warming filter sold by us is the 81B. The 81 series come in strengths from 81 the weakest to 81EF the strongest .The 81s are straw toned and when used for outdoor photography they compensate for the excess blues found in shade, extend the morning light and overall enrich the tonal quality of your images. The 81A's and 81B's from all our filter companies are the same in strength and tonality. When referring to the literature from most of the filter companies the uses for 81A's are for indoor use with artificial light to warm it up to the standard Kelvin temperature of B type films. We have found that the 81s by our customers are used more outdoors than indoor. This is especially true of the 81B
The German filter makers have offered the KR series as their warming group and you will find references to the comparable 81 filter strengths. When using the German warmers the Kelvin degree shift may be similar but the tonal quality is defiantly not the same. The German filters are more of a coral tone and not the straw tone of the 81 filter group. Many of our customers have found this tone to be much more pleasing and life like. So a B+W KR3 is not the same as an 81C. An American produced filter, which is in the same tonal range as the German warming filters, is Tiffen's 812 warming filter. The Tiffen 812 has been our second most popular warming filter and if there was a German filter like it. It would fall into their range as a KR2, which for years we wish they would make. The Tiffen 812 has about a 300 degree shift in warmth just like the 81B's. This coral tone warmth has also found its way into Tiffen's very popular warm soft focus filter line. If you have been a fan of Tiffen's 812 warming filter and wished for a stronger version try the German KR3.
The German KR3's are very useful on overcast days, high-altitude mountain photography and anywhere there is too much blue. The coral tone is especially very pleasing in portrait photography. We have found that the KR3 in combination with polarizers also create excellent results.
A less known, but also very pleasing warming filter is the 85C. The 85C's have more of amber tone and create the look of very early or late sunlight. Using 85C's will take some experimentation on your part, but for certain subjects the results again could be very nice.
When evaluating the different warming filters keep in mind that the brand of film, the brand of lens and the processor will effect the final results that you achieve. One way if you shoot slides to see the effect of the different warming filters is to look at your slides with the actual warming filters behind them. Using your lightbox put the warming filter on the box and then put the slide on top and you will get a pretty good idea of what the image would have been using the warming filter.
Last Updated on 2/14/98 - By The Filter Connection
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