My background is UK commercial and corporate production for over 15 years. I'm now a professor teaching video production in the communications department of US University . I still do commercial and documentary work on the side, to stay sharp and tick my professional development box.For years I've owned creative Tiffen filters in the form of Black Pro Mist 1/8, 1/4, 1/2. These are all great in narrative settings, but I was recently shooting a documentary about Idaho Dairymen, albeit in a cinematic style, and needed to reduce the native digital contrasty look of my BMPCC 4K. I was also using cine-modded Zeiss classic primes, which have their own sharp contrast to them.I wanted a filter that I could keep in my Tilta Mb-12 matte-box to more subtly do the job of ... MoreMy background is UK commercial and corporate production for over 15 years. I'm now a professor teaching video production in the communications department of US University . I still do commercial and documentary work on the side, to stay sharp and tick my professional development box.For years I've owned creative Tiffen filters in the form of Black Pro Mist 1/8, 1/4, 1/2. These are all great in narrative settings, but I was recently shooting a documentary about Idaho Dairymen, albeit in a cinematic style, and needed to reduce the native digital contrasty look of my BMPCC 4K. I was also using cine-modded Zeiss classic primes, which have their own sharp contrast to them.I wanted a filter that I could keep in my Tilta Mb-12 matte-box to more subtly do the job of lowering contrast, adding a very slight halation to highlights, to facilitate a nicer roll-off, without screaming filtered image! I'm using this with 100mm, 85mm, 50mm, 35mm, 25mm and 15mm primes. Before folks get snotty about swapping out filter strengths for focal lengths, I didn't feel the need to with this. I do consider that with the Black Pro Mists, but these new Tiffen filters are simply better at letting you get away with it when magnifying the creative effect.This can still be used on narrative work. An example of this filter and strength being used on narrative work across a range of primes would be British cinematographer, Si Bell using it on season 5 of the BBC show Peaky Blinders. He wanted to keep the larger than life atmosphere and peaky vibe established in previous seasons but inject a feeling of realism into the proceedings. This Tiffen 4 x 5.65 Black Satin Diffusion Filter (1/4 Density) helped him, in part, to achieve that look.I'm coupling this filter in the matte-box with Formatt Hitech Firecrest ND's 0.6, 0.9, 1.5 and the results are great.I can see myself opting for this filter more often, over the Black Pro Mists, even in my narrative and commercial work. It has much of the same effect without smashing the image so much and drawing attention to the filtration.Hope this is helpful to someone.

I have many filters that I've collected over the last few years.This one is just fantastic. I double it up with the Tiffen Smoque 1 and it's probably my favorite combo. Instead of describing what my eyes see, I'll post a couple of screenshots for you to see for yourself. I also bought recently the 1/2 version, which I Iike even more.

Adds a soft subtle glow with much less "subtle peen" than the Black Satin 1. If you aren't sure what I mean, the pattern on these make a subtle phallic shape in the flares. It's much less noticeable on the 1/4 and 1/8 but still there, very noticeable on the 1. Otherwise if there's no flare it adds a soft subtle glow to the image and removes some of that sharpness and clinical look. A little expensive.