SRB MONOVUE Contrast Viewing Filter

[Uwe Pilz]

I had such a beast, may be I still have. I found it of less use. Every of us, photographing in b/w for some time, knows how colors translate into grey values.
For beginners, there are two important things:
- green is always to dark, a green filter helps.
- the blue sky is always too light, a yellow filter helps.

The next step may be:
- Quite a lot of films give a slightly too light red.

[mpirie]

The Zone VI viewer worked for me more like a framing device rather than an indication of the respective tones.

Even if you do use the olive green Wratten #90, it only works for a short while as your brain knows what the colours were before you started looking through the filter, so eventually, you will start to see colours again even through the filter.

[skellum]

One reason the filters may have stopped selling is the prevalence of mobile phones. I don't do it myself, but I can imagine some newer photographers who struggle to visualise in B&W whipping out their 'phones, setting the camera to 'mono' and seeing on screen what they might get.
My wife's Samsung 'phone has a mono setting which produces very nice black and white images, looking a bit like FP4.

[Martin Aislabie]

I have tried but never got on with these B&W viewing filters.

I always found the image still had all the colours - but the image was just much darker.

I find the best way to work out what the image will look like in B&W is to use a spot meter and mentally convert the readings in to tones.

You can get a sticker for your spot meter that will show you roughly what the zones look like in monochrome, - if you need it.

Martin