Since shooting our projects like ‘EROSION’ and ‘Wolakota’ I’ve been a big fan of the Tiffen Smoque filters and recently had the chance to test out the new Tiffen Black Fog and Night Fog filters.
This entire test is shot on Venice 2 and Leica R 50mm wide open at T1.3.
In this first test, it’s super interesting to see how both the Black Fog and Night Fog bloom from the headlight out, while the Smoque retains the highlight details but adds an extreme warm/red flare around it.
The next test seemed like it had an interesting conclusion: if you remove the 1/8 Night Fog from the series, going from 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 Black Fog to 1/4 and 1/2 Night Fog seems like a perfect progression.
That being said, this comparison and idea that ‘Night Fog’ is just a slightly stronger version of the ‘Black Fog’ falls apart as soon as you factor in a strong backlight. In a series of early morning, hard backlit shots even the 1/8 Night Fog still shows a lower contrast and lifts shadows more than the 1/2 Black Fog.
And last but not least, here is a shot directly into the sun. I compared multiple exposures and chose a severely underexposed version, as it shows the contrast changes better and also illustrates the rainbow rings that the Smoque filter produces even more clearly.
Summing up, both the Black Fog - for a bit more subtle effects - and the Night Fog - for heavy to extremely lifted contrast - offer some interesting new options. In very flat lighting the difference between 1/8 to 1/2 of the Black Fog is barely noticeable - while the Night Fog even in very flat light is very distinguished at all strengths.
Personally the Black Fog will certainly be in my repertoire going forward.
If you want to check out the entire test, here is a link to all the stills: TIFFEN FILTER TEST
I hope this test was helpful to shed some light onto these new filters!
Cheers! Tim
Please note that my 1/2 Smoque appeared extremely heavy and did not fit into the test results. I purchased a brand new 1/2 Smoque and it turned out that it did not match my original 1/2 at all. I still included my old 1/2 Smoque in the Dropbox folder but the strength is probably closer to a 2 Smoque and thus not very helpful in this comparison.