In dramatic lighting conditions, a back mist filter mutes all the dark tones and adds different gradients and blooming to highlight your scene. A product like NiSi black mist filter will improve your landscape photos by making a direct light source film-like, adding a buttery and smooth texture around the highlights. If you use this filter in a shot, it turns any dry environment into a smoky and misty room highlighted with a lot of light rays and reflections. It is ideal for adding a smoky and misty effect without physically producing smoke in a low-budget shot.
Features of Black Mist Filters
- Diminishes the shadow detail.
- Creates a pastel-like quality that gives an aesthetic look to the image.
- Maintains the resolution even while lowering the contrast and sharpness of bright light sources.
- Softens and enhances the highlights of a frame to give the image a cinematic look.
- The filter’s effect is best observed in settings where the subject is backlit with a concentrated light source.
- Softens bright sources of light to give an ethereal glow and softness that is useful in removing blemishes and wrinkles from the skin in a portrait.
What Are the Effects Produced by Black Mist Filters?
The gradient of effect needed for a shot depends mainly on the lighting situation of the frame. It is better how much effect you need in a shot before it becomes too much and spoils the image altogether. Meanwhile, a black filter kit, like the NiSi black mist filter kit, has three increments of effects: ½, ¼, and ⅛. The increment you need to add will depend on the type of circular filter you will use.
The subtle effect given by the 1/8 filter will give the shot a more sterile, organic, and film-like effect. It also gives the image a softer quality with less contrast than usual. The 1/4 filter gives a blooming and halation effect, resulting in a soft ethereal glow that highlights the frame. These filters are usually used to add softness to a female’s facial features, making them ideal for portraits.
The 1/2 filter will give the image a low-fi or vintage aesthetic. In night footage and low-light shots, these lower stop mist filters add a subtle aesthetic that is very appealing.
Black Mist Filter for Cinematography
Before the introduction of diffusion filters, filmmakers used techniques like face nets and vaseline to soften the facial features and enhance the beauty of actors. With the advent of diffusion filters, cinematographers used these high-resolution cameras to reduce light’s sharpness and create effects reminiscent of dream sequences and fantasy pieces.
Black Mist Filters for Portraits
Black mist filters reduce the sharpness of light to give a soft light that highlights the skin tones and gives the effect of smooth skin without any blemishes or wrinkles.
Black Mist Filters for Street Photography
These filters are ideal for street photography, especially during the night. It creates a halo effect from a bright light source, like a streetlight; it spreads the light and creates a soft glow by diffusing the brightened areas of the frame to reduce the overall contrast. By using these filters, you can soften the highlights of the frame, giving the picture a film-like appearance. The degree of this effect will vary on the black mist filter’s density.
Shooting in an outdoor setting with a bright light source is extremely hard. But, black mist filters allow you to use this light creatively. This filter will enable you to control the refraction and reflection from glass structures and other reflective surfaces to lessen their impact and cast a soft glow on the whole frame.
