Diffusion Filters

Barks

Barks

Barks

Soldato
Joined
20 Jul 2008
Posts
4,494
Yay or nay?

I realised the other day almost the entire time I've owned my XF 33mm f1.4 it has had a Tide Optics Cinesubtle filter on it. I was about to shoot a friend's wedding with it but stopped to look at some of the portrait shots I've taken recently and I think I'm over this look now.

I got drawn into them with the whole Fujifilm recipe thing and the fact they take off the clinical look of digital. I think they're awesome for night photography or dusk/dawn shots with artificial lighting but for daytime the photos just look a bit weird. Also this is a very subtle 1/8 equivalent effect.

I'm just intrigued to hear what you guys think of them? Does anyone leave them on their lens the entire time like I did?
 
I have a Tiffan Black Pro mist 1/8th and I have used it just once.

I bought it to try and find it too much of a faff to put it on for like a single photo, especially I like to shoot more run and gun anyway. I don't want it for every photo.
 
DD_Crash said:
Wouldnt it be easier to do this in post using On1 Effects, Nik Effects or similar?
Click to expand...

That was another question. I wouldn't have thought you could recreate the exact same effect in post without the image looking too artificial. Maybe someone on here has tried it or compared it to using an actual filter.
 
Boris Effects Optics has a lot of Fuji simulation options and does lots of other stuff as well, If you use adobe it works as a plugin. On1 photoraw and Affinity photo dont work as a plugin (I have tried)
I am sure that there is a free trial available
 
I went to Mallorca recently and took a 28mm prime, a cpl and a couple of diffusion filters just as a carry around set. During the day, it was a bit meh with a diffusion filter ... as mentioned above, they knock off some of the clarity which I felt was rarely good enough to give a particular look that outweighed the loss in detail in some places. A nighttime, though it was far better and did add a bit of the glow look to the images as you would expect.

In the end, I stuck the cpl on for the day, and the df for the night and left it at that ... which worked well for me.

I dont think they are really daytime filters in any way for me now.
 
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Barks said:
That was another question. I wouldn't have thought you could recreate the exact same effect in post without the image looking too artificial. Maybe someone on here has tried it or compared it to using an actual filter.
Click to expand...

You can in Photoshop or similar - essentially you select the highlight range, copy it to a new layer, and gaussian blur the highlight layer. Set the highlight layer to lighten blend mode, and change opacity to change the intensity of the effect. Lots of tutorials on YouTube of different ways to do it.

Every filter has its place, I am considering getting into a magnetic filter system to enable fast swapping / removal of filters as thats the main reason to not change them between shots - its a faff.
 
Here's one I took a few months ago on the 33mm. I just don't see how you could recreate this softness in Photoshop from a much sharper photo. I know you can use tricks to make the lights glow but do you know what I mean about the entire image just looking a bit dreamy?

This was straight out the camera JPG with Ema De Luca's 'Italian Summer' recipe.

 
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Selectively warm with local adjustment, with On1 Effects use one of the glow effects and adjust opacity and maybe a lut over the top. Nice image.
 
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