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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Best filters for beauty

Joseph Seuferling

Joseph Seuferling

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Which filters would you recommend for close-ups on talent - specifically women? The ones I know of are the Tiffen HDTV/FX, Digital Diffusion/FX, or Black Pro-Mist. I have no experience with these, nor do I have the budget to purchase more than a couple, so any recommendations about the most useful density would be helpful as well. I shoot a wide range of material, most of which is slated for Web delivery, however, I will be shooting for an indie theatrical release later this year. Thanks!
 
Black pro mist and Hollywood black magic are popular filters. I really like smoquee filters as well.

The BPM and HBM normally are used at 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, and 1 (they make a 2 as well, and maybe a 3, but I rarely have seen them)
 
im currently in the market for some filters. although mine will be 77mm. What size are you going for? Ive been looking at a variety of tiffen filters, IR/ND, Pro mist, Classic soft, Black magic. I tend to like the 1/4 and 1/2. after that things start looking pretty buttery to me.
 
Often when shooting beauty, we will work with black frosts and smoque filters or a sheer stocking, when there is enough time to really "tweak" the lighting and composition to make the most of the effect of the filters on the scene being photographed.

Recently our post flow includes a pass through BeautyBox or MagicBullet Cosmo, which can work wonders in getting complexions and wrinkles dealt with quickly in our NLE.

If you have the luxury of time and trial, nothing matches the effects you can achieve on-set with nets and filters, but in a hurry-up world, fixing it in post is often a welcome solution!
 
The only issue with Black Magic is it doesn't come in smaller strengths in 77mm. They say they make a 1/2 for sale in 77mm, but I've never seen it. Right now the weakest strength I can find in 77mm is a "1", which seems like a bit of a strong level to begin at. A good DP of mind always suggests getting the first TWO strengths of any filter. And this is way beyond....

Don't forget Classic Soft, too.
 
Thanks everyone. Domenic, I am looking for 4x5.6 to fit the RED mattebox, and am leaning towards the black Pro-mist, probably as you suggest at 1/4 & 1/2. Brandon, I have also gotten good results at 1080p using Cosmo but haven't tried it on anything higher rez (will it render at any higher?). I guess I imagine using the glass filters would yield a more organic looking result.
 
Yeah, add glimmerglass to the list. It"s hard to make the call on which filter to choose, they all seem very similar and hard to judge from the jpg's.
 
You're right, they are very hard to judge from jpg's. I recommend you take a look at what's available and what you can afford and go with your gut!

Glimmerglass does look really neat.

I was short on budget recently and decided to buy some $6 pantyhose and use them on the rear element. I chose the least sheer (shiny) pantyhose, the largest size for the most material, and I picked a very light brown colour. I put them on the rear of the lens because I figured it would be a bit softer. I operated on a show with front netting, and I found there was properties of it I didn't love, and the assistants were quietly hating it.

We used snot tape to attach the netting, and it worked through the day without needing to be fixed up. I had the guys stretch the material thinner over wider lenses and not so much on the longer ones. We fired up each lens at the beginning of the day on a stand in, and had a look at the consistency across the set.

It was a highly effective effect, and the producers were absolutely over the moon with the images... they were so happy with the resourceful solution since they did turn me down on filter rentals in pre due to budget.

What I liked about it was a lack of uniformity. I used BPM again since then, a typical filter for me, and it struck me how machined and inorganic the blooming was compared to the more streaky, uneven flaring that appears to me a lot more like what I see when I look at a light in the rain or with something in my eye. It depends on what you're after at the time. The netting was a pretty heavy effect, and it worked with the subject matter being a duet musical romantic thing.

No one can tell you what you want it to look like for this particular show, you just have to try stuff out and go with your gut!

These stills are massively compressed jpgs (sorry this keeps happening to you!), completely ungraded, straight out of the camera with $6 underwear rear net: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...0889938.-2207520000.1357005198&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...0889938.-2207520000.1357005198&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...0889938.-2207520000.1357005198&type=3&theater

Best of luck!
 
Wow, Naim! Those shots do have a nicely organic beauty. Thanks for posting. I think I will give this a try! Do you try to stretch it very tightly and evenly?
 
The more evenly you stretch it, the more uniform the flaring and blooming will be. It's hugely difficult to get a perfectly even stretch, so there are some built in flaws, which is what I like about it.

In terms of stretching you really do just need to test it out and have a look. Ideally you'd do it before shoot day under the lighting you expect to employ, and bring the footage through a bit of post. Try to judge from a reasonable sized screen too. I did mine on the day, and just used our 24" village screen to judge and I just did it to taste. I just dialed in a pretty significant LUT (as you can see), and made sure focus assist was off. There is no real way to be scientific about this type of process, so it's a real gut feel type thing, and I like that about it too.

For tightness the general theory is that you would stretch a bit more for wider lenses due to greater fov and focus, and a little less the longer the lens is, just as you would use different strengths of BPM or anything else depending on the lens length, and even f stop I guess if you wanted to be super specific about it (I am almost never that specific).

I shot on Xenars in the example I showed you, so there was a nice sizable area of housing around the rear element where they could lay the snot tape. Then we stretched our cuts to our best guess and tacked them down, carefully cutting off the excess. So the physicality of your lenses (EF would be trickier), and even the f stops you intend to work with are factors as well.

I noticed too you said it was for the web, and you should be aware that sometimes blooming and flaring can sometimes be tough for web compression. Web compression has gotten so much better these last few years that usually don't worry about it TOO much, depending on the job... but it is something I may raise with the post guys and see if we can get some extra bit rate going on the encoding to help out. Just something to be aware of, and as always, testing is best.

If you have green screen I would definitely be subtle in filtering and avoid flares and blooming entirely.
 
The mystical Holy Grail of net is created from a long discontinued Dior DN 10 stocking.


(DN or "denier" is the hosiery industry grading for the sheerness of the weave. The lower the denier number the sheerer the net)


We have searched the world for the "perfect" replacement and actually found it.

The company is "Secrets in Lace" and the model is 9960 Gennia 10DN Black.

Most folks won't share their special sauce, but hey it's new years, right?

Enjoy!
 
Note that one major issue with using heavy diffusion in production is that you can't undo it in post. I would strongly recommend any of you who plan these methods shoot extensive tests first and figure out how far to go, lest you wind up going too far. And note that there's all kinds of plug-ins available in AfterEffects and other color-correction programs that will get you pretty close to a diffuse look. The advantage of those are, they look exactly the same with a 15mm lens as they do with a 150mm lens. When you put a physical filter on each of these lenses, they look very different just because of the different amounts of glass used by the field of view.

On the other hand: very secure DPs can and do go with deliberate looks in-camera, to make absolutely sure that nobody can change it in post. And that's a perfectly valid choice, provided you know what you're doing.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Note that one major issue with using heavy diffusion in production is that you can't undo it in post. I would strongly recommend any of you who plan these methods shoot extensive tests first and figure out how far to go, lest you wind up going too far. And note that there's all kinds of plug-ins available in AfterEffects and other color-correction programs that will get you pretty close to a diffuse look. The advantage of those are, they look exactly the same with a 15mm lens as they do with a 150mm lens. When you put a physical filter on each of these lenses, they look very different just because of the different amounts of glass used by the field of view.

On the other hand: very secure DPs can and do go with deliberate looks in-camera, to make absolutely sure that nobody can change it in post. And that's a perfectly valid choice, provided you know what you're doing.
Click to expand...

This may be true, but it's very hard to re-create in post the kind of "blooming" that diffusion can do in-camera. The softness can be recreated, but the blooming of highlights, their glow and rolloff, is very hard to recreate accurately in post in a manner that isn't time intensive.

But agreed, this kind of diffusion should only be done if you KNOW what you are doing, and are committed. Not for the wishy-washy or faint of heart.
 
BRANDON JAMESON said:
The mystical Holy Grail of net is created from a long discontinued Dior DN 10 stocking.


(DN or "denier" is the hosiery industry grading for the sheerness of the weave. The lower the denier number the sheerer the net)


We have searched the world for the "perfect" replacement and actually found it.

The company is "Secrets in Lace" and the model is 9960 Gennia 10DN Black.

Most folks won't share their special sauce, but hey it's new years, right?

Enjoy!
Click to expand...

Do you go in front, or behind lens?
 
I swear, as a director if a DP puts another diffusion filter on the camera to "take the edge off" or "for beauty" I'm gonna start swinging.

;)
 
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