We test quiet a few products during the year, and most of them are fun/creative/ok and some will actually end up in my workflow, but sometimes there are products that are so awesome that I just can’t get enough of using them.

When I was send a K&F Black Mist filter I must admit that it was not something I was looking forward to. I’m just not real big on filters, and don’t get me wrong I think there is a huge market for filters, but it’s just not really my thing… I do use a polariser sometimes and also a variable ND filter is very nice to have but that’s about it… so I thought.

When I first attached the Black Mist I didn’t really see a difference (and that’s a good thing), however when opening the photos I did find that the images with the Black Mist had a nice hardly noticeable glow over the skin, but everything else was still pin sharp… the story changed 100% when I started using backlights.

I just love the real lens flares, the silky/milky glow around lights is something that is almost impossible to achieve in Photoshop or other software, and yes you can do something that looks like it, but it’s still different, and for me actually looks fake most of the times.

But getting a real lens flare is pretty hard nowadays, most lenses are coated with antiglare/flare coatings and even in marketing it’s often hailed as the next best thing “No more flares”… well yeah they are right, normally you don’t want lens flare, but the fact is that when you want it, it becomes harder and harder to achieve.

Some solutions are for example using vintage lenses, or very cheap third party lenses without the proper coating, but there are a lot of disadvantages with this, first of all vintage lenses are super cool, but are also limited in focus speed (via an AF convertor (only for Sony at the moment)) or are 100% manual including aperture. So focussing on f11 can be a real problem with some lenses. Another solution is LensBaby, an awesome line up of creative lenses and accessories, but also here you are pretty limited.

So what if I tell you that with the Black Mist filter you transform EVERY lens into a flare machine.
And the cool thing is that when you take “normal” photos you hardly notice the filter, but as soon as there are some highlights, or backlighting in your set, the Black Mist really does it work.

I’m so impressed with the Black Mist filters that we actually added them to our line up of products we sell.
So if you also want one of the awesome filters check frankdoorhof.com/shop
We deliver the filter in different strengths and filter sizes, even a magnetic version.
If you need something else, please let us know.

For the release we also created two videos.
Here is the Dutch version
Here is the English version