Didymium enhancing filters

[Ruby Rod]

I like Nikon's color rendering a lot, but wondered if anybody is adding color enhancing filters for a bit more pop, and which ones. Have zero experience with them.

 

[Discombobulated]

I like Nikon's color rendering a lot, but wondered if anybody is adding color enhancing filters for a bit more pop, and which ones. Have zero experience with them.

What can’t be done in the post editing these days?

 

[ybb]

Didymium filters are usually used for reducing sodium vapor bulbs light. So, it is useful for night city photography and astrophotography to reduce light pollution. However, a lot of cities are switching to LED lights, so these filters become less and less useful

 

[Ernie Misner]

I like Nikon's color rendering a lot, but wondered if anybody is adding color enhancing filters for a bit more pop, and which ones. Have zero experience with them.

I tried some of the color enhancing filters a few years ago but haven't tried them with digital yet. We get such great color, and have so many editing options now that they seem to be out of favor. Take a look at the Singh-Ray site. They have filters that enhance reds, blues, and yellows I think.

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=f8180e7d4bf90421JmltdHM9MTY5OTA1NjAwMCZpZ3VpZD0wNGViYjA1Ny1hZDhjLTZlZTUtMWEyZC1iZTA4YWM1MDZmNTQmaW5zaWQ9NTIzNg&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=04ebb057-ad8c-6ee5-1a2d-be08ac506f54&psq=singh+ray+filters&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9zaW5naC1yYXkuY29tLw&ntb=1

 

[Richard M Nikon]

I used Hoya Enhancing filters, made of didymium glass (praseodymium / neodymium), decades ago while shooting film.

They were quite effective in saturating oranges, reds and browns in shots of fall foliage, but the effect was often way overblown.

I don't see any point in using them today, as any post-processing software would provide much more control over the desired effect.

 

[Ruby Rod]

I like Nikon's color rendering a lot, but wondered if anybody is adding color enhancing filters for a bit more pop, and which ones. Have zero experience with them.

What can’t be done in the post editing these days?

That's part of my thinking, but I wonder if there's something specialty narrow band filters can do with the initial spectrum that can't be duplicated in post. I do know that filtering can knock down some wavelengths so they don't clip a channel and will let you increase exposure. Have a birthday coming and may try one just to see what happens.

 

[Nebido]

I use the Natural Night filter from NiSi, which is a filter with Didymium glass, for night city photography and occasionally also for daylight"color enhancing", especially now with the autumn leaves and the fall colors.

However, as already written by another user, the effect with modern LED lamps is less useful.

https://milkywayphotographers.com/article/2019/03/15/light-pollution-filter-mega-comparison-by-bh-photo-video/

 

[jiberlin]

I like Nikon's color rendering a lot, but wondered if anybody is adding color enhancing filters for a bit more pop, and which ones. Have zero experience with them.

What can’t be done in the post editing these days?

The result of narrow band filters like the mentioned Didymium enhancing filter is different from what can be done in post processing. The question is, is the benefit enough for the spending and the degradation/modification of the RAW image?

 

[Ellis Vener]

For the expense, I think you’ll be better off spending it on some education in how to use gradients and gradient masks in photoshop. Specifically, lately I’ve been learning a lot from Blade Rudis’s “Beyond Color” and “Game of Tones” and Zone System video tutorials from https://f64academy.



This was an area of digital darkroom work I had never really understood and was slightly bewildered by, so I didn’t use those tools, but they are very useful, practical, and powerful.

Some of the techniques he discusses may have been superseded by the latest updates to Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, but I am finding the principles he discusses are still applicable.



It’s not that I think that all lens filters are now useless, because I don’t I still use polarizers, solid (but not graduated) ND, filters, an a a couple of diffusion filters: specifically, the 1/4 and 1/2 strength versions of the Schneider Hollywood Black Magic, and I am starting to work with the 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 strengths of the new Lee-Formatt Firecrest Bloom Gold filters.

 

[Nebido]

All the essential information about Didymium filters can be found in the article I have already linked. There are also various video examples there, as the filter effect varies depending on the filter.

https://milkywayphotographers.com/a...ion-filter-mega-comparison-by-bh-photo-video/

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explor...ion-filters-tested-do-they-really-work-part-1

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explor...ion-filters-tested-do-they-really-work-part-2

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explor...ion-filters-tested-do-they-really-work-part-3

I really like using this for nighttime city photography, but overall such filters have lost some of their relevance with LED as a light source and they also have some disadvantages in astrophotography.

"Didymium glass has been used since at least the 1970s in landscape photography as a “color enhancing” filter. By filtering out yellow light (and some green as well), it saturates the red and some blue tones in a photograph. It’s a popular filter for fall colors, as it makes autumn leaves appear more vibrant.

Low-Pressure Sodium lamps have two bright yellow lines, so close to each other they often look like one line in spectrums. These yellow lines match well with the filtering properties of didymium glass.

In recent years, didymium filters have been used by Nightscaper and Milky Way photographers, removing the amber light produced by both LPS and HPS lighting.

Didymium Glass – Not a Perfect Solution

A large number of light pollution filters are based on didymium glass formulations. However, didymium glass is not a perfect solution for removing light pollution. LED, metal halide, and HPS lighting to a lesser extent, contain a number of other colors that didymium does not remove so it has little effect on these lights."

The other bad news for didymium glass is that stars contain yellow light. At least the brighter ones usually do. That means a didymium filter will make most stars appear dimmer."

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Nevertheless, it can achieve effects that are very difficult to reproduce in PP.

In the end, it's a cost question as to whether you want to afford such filter solutions, which are not really inexpensive, especially with larger diameters.

If you like the effect of such filters and you often do night photography in the city, then it is definitely worth it.

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Comment from the B&H tester to the question, can’t light pollution be removed in ps/lr using targeted color level adjustments?

"I would be tempted to answer "Yes" to your question, but, in my tests, I found that the color shift and overall effect of the filters was pleasant (for the most part), and very difficult to replicate in Photoshop/Lightroom.

With all the new filters coming onto the market, my guess is that this is a bit more than a gimmick or attempt by film-filter companies to stay relevant! Additionally, astronomers have been using light pollution filters for a long time.

Check out Part 3of this article and the conclusions at the end. When I processed the images (just using a WB adjustment), I found the filtered image much more appealing. I suppose you could get there, eventually, in Photoshop/Lightroom, but that is a lot of work I would rather not do.

I hope that answers your question. My recommendation? Grab a filter and take it for a spin. You really don't have anything to lose!"