Filters vs. Post

Hi all,

I'm wondering if people are still seeking to use various specialized filters such as light stars or color with the film works or prefer to manage in post with the multitude of AE software...

I want a ND filter for sure but started wondering about some of the others old-school'rs may be using...

I try to get everything done in camera that I can. With raw you still need to get into the colour and contrast but I use filters for most looks. Not much in the way of colour filters. Digicons, low cons, attenuators, black mist just about does what I need.

I also have a bunch of gels that get used a lot for looks.

Colour filters alway make me think of the sunset grads in Top Gun........

Don't mess with my sunset grad!

And yes, It is best to get it in camera-- easier too often. You may not have the same level of control you'd get in a computer-- but you often get the happy accidents.

hell I throw all kinds of stuff in front of my lenses when need be-- from good old diffusion filters, to NDs, Center Spots, ladies frilly things, custom drilled acrylic sheets, even a broken coke bottle and prisms.
You'd also be amazed what you can do with some fishing line-- very thin-- taped over the front of a lens.

Or if you want something interesting-- cut out a heart shape in a piece of black paper---or rubber, and put it right up against the lens-- then look at your out of focus areas....

What kind of diffusion do you use and recommend ?

Depends on what you're doing and your own tastes. I tend to use a 1/4 Warm Black Pro Mist,unless it's a very wide shot with lots of fine detail. I also love Classic Softs, and Hollywood Black Magics are amazing. It's really something you have to play with, learn, and form your own ideas on. Also it will depend on the lenses you are using, and how they themselves resolve things. I have little to no reason to diffuse a cooke lens, but on an Ultra Prime I may go up a grade on diffusion.
Also If i'm shooting on an Epic at 3:1 for some reason, I may need more diffusion than I would at 5:1.
If I'm shooting at a 5.6 I need to be more careful with diffusion than if I were at a 1.3 (though at a 1.3 I may pull diffusion anyway to get all the light on the sensor-- or I may go to a lowcon to get more detail in the shadows). It all depends on what you're doing-- and what you're looking at.

I i'm thinking of the HBM also. they seem interesting

I want my BMC to have a bit more "filmic" feel to it.
We have used some diffusion for that and it gave nice feeling but
i did not like the filters that we used so much.



This is the one i meant.
It does not feel to me as super sharp despite BMC.

I think it looks fine. Any diff filter will lower sharpness, sometimes substantially--and truthfully just softening the image isn't going to give as much of the film look--it'll help--but I personally think the look of film has a lot more to do with color reproduction and roll off of the highlights and shadows than particular sharpness. Hell even 500T films will often out-resolve digital systems if treated properly-- and depending upon your own viewing environment (reproduction size/encoding /lenses used/scene contrast (since low frequency contrast is substantially more important to human vision than high frequency ) ect).

Yes i know what you mean.

DOF roll off like Cooks have or anamorphic lenses.

The rule that I always follow as a general rule is to get everything you can in camera, and use Post to enhance the effects that you got in camera.

Not even DoF roll off-- but just highlight and shadow illumination roll off-- film just don't clip the way digital does-- especially on the high end (where negative keeps getting thicker and thicker-- blacker, where digital eventually goes Oh no! perzzzaappt)

It is not very likely that small productions like mine will ever shoot on film

We can only make it "feel like" a bit but that is about it.

But i know what you are saying.