Smoque 1 filter for (daytime) interiors?

[Stip]

I don’t use filters but have a tight shoot in lots of rather auster rooms on location. I’d usually add a little bit of very fine haze to at least have some atmosphere but there’s no crew/time to do it well and consistent enough, so I stumbled across Tiffen Smoque filters.

Has anyone experience with them, especially for daylight interiors?

It would guarantee consistency but I’m not sure it will behave predictable. I watched all videos online I could find and sometimes it looks surprisingly great, other times it can look really bad, especially when light sources directly hit the filter, so I’d be hesitant to use it for nighttime interiors. From what I’ve seen anything above Smoque 1 is too much anyways.

 

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[dmullenasc]

I got the Smoque 1 and 2 filters years ago because smoke is dimensional, so when I would shoot inserts on a scene, like objects on a desk or wall, there was no smoke visible even though the room was hazed. So the filters allowed the inserts to maintain the look of the wider shots.  At some point, I had a few scenes where I couldn’t haze — one involved the windows being blown-out by an explosion — so I used the Smoque filter. It was convincing about half the time. One problem is that the filter needs a light source to hit it, like a window or a bright highlight, to really see the effect, but when someone passes between the window and the filter, the effect disappears momentarily, which is odd. So you have to think of it as an effect somewhere between using haze and using a Double Fog filter, it’s not a substitute for smoke… except to help match smoked shots with shots without smoke in a pinch.

[Stip]

Thank you David!

“It was convincing about half the time. One problem is that the filter needs a light source to hit it, like a window or a bright highlight, to really see the effect, but when someone passes between the window and the filter, the effect disappears momentarily, which is odd.”

I think that confirms my concerns. Having to take extra care so it doesn’t behave odd isn’t efficient or worth it.

I’ll still look into Smoque though because the way you use it on inserts makes a lot of sense, thanks for the tip!

[Author]

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