Tiffen 77GG1 77mm Glimmer Glass 1 Filter

Product Information

ColorCore® Technology (per < link > The Tiffen ColorCore technology is a secret proprietary formula...) Sometimes the result is similar to what the Orton effect is achieving, the major difference is, that the Orton effect affects bright and dark parts of the frame alike, whereas the diffusion filters emphasize the brighter parts.

The Glimmerglass series of filters also has a benefit of sparkling when viewed, which can add reassurance to your talent when shooting beauty; that way you can fully concentrate on the look of your shot." But there are situations where doing everything in software isn‘t viable or simply not wanted. First, if you shoot video, it will cause very heavy workloads in post. Second, if you shoot on film…well, that‘s obvious. Third, if you‘re a purist and don‘t want to treat every image in post, or if you try to improve your “analogue” photographic skills.

I have never been a huge fan of these so called “effect filters” but my friend Simeon Kolev showed a few cool pictures where he used these Diffusion filters to good effect, so I decided to give it a try. When a light source is overexposed it blooms—it spreads out over the adjacent parts of the image. The diffusion filter strengthens that spreading and here you can see the Moon has bloomed out to many times its original size. In this particular case I find this extreme blooming undesirable although no doubt good use could be made of this effect.

The X100V doesn’t initially appear to be able to accept filters. There are no screw-in threads visible. But there’s a “secret” ring around the lens that unscrews to reveal threads, but these threads cannot accept filters. You need to buy an adapter to screw into those threads that has its own threads that filters can screw into. Make sense? This look is going to look familiar to you. If you watch Netflix or AppleTV+ or Hulu or any of the rest you have seen diffusion, and sometimes lots of it. It’s everywhere as filmmakers turn to older lenses and other techniques to both add character to their work and to differentiate themselves from other TV series. The result, to my eyes, is that there are an awful lot of similar-looking shows out there, all with the missing reds, various intensities of glow around the light sources, flare and whatnot from the lenses.

Earlier we saw flare from the filter and here it is again, though brighter and clearer. And again we see that it is not even—is there something in the flare? And there is—a picture of the Moon. With greatly reduced exposure the details of its surface are clear, the focused light having bounced off the flat filter in some way. There’s a coolness factor here that cannot be denied.