What is a good filter for B/W in the fall?

[Treymac]

Hey guys. I've been taking courses in film photography, and I'm in my second course now. We are using black and white, and I think I'd like to change things up a little by using a filter.

What would be a good filter to use, especially this time of year in the fall. Would polarizers be interesting?

 

[Joves]

You might try looking here this guy even shows what the different colors do. Using coloured filters with black & white film

 

[Derrel]

A filter tends to lighten its own color. I think you might like to try an orange or red filter for more dramatic skies. A yellow filter is fairly "standard" for rendering blue skies as a light gray,and something other than ugly bald white, so you should always have a yellow filter on for almost all proper B&W renderings using modern panchromatic films. Yellow is the baseline filter,an you should own a yellow filter for most B&W use.

Red will give you some pretty dramatic blue sky and white cloud renderings. Red darkens the sky more than yellow, but less than orange. I used a Number 25 red a lot back in the day.

Orange can give a lot of contrast, but on orange and red leaves the leaves will be rendered lighter than they appear,and the skies will be made rather dark; sometimes that will work, other times it will look a bit odd.

 

[Dwig]

...
What would be a good filter to use, especially this time of year in the fall. Would polarizers be interesting?

Polarizers can be the better choice for landscapes in late fall or winter when there is little color in the subject. They do require clear sky to be effective.

Other good choices (#'s are Wratten designations):

orange/red (#23) and red (#25 & #29): darken skies and lighten reddish fall foliage.

green (#11, sometimes termed "yellow-green"): slightly darkens skies and lightens green foliage to keep it from matching the grey tree trunks. This is a good choice if you shoot before things start to die off for the season (or live in the tropics like me).