I love visiting nature reserves, but Parc Slip is a place I simply don’t like for taking photographs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the place for walking and talking and admiring the scenery, but for images… It just doesn’t do anything for me. So what better opportunity to try out one of my new filters, this particular shoot was the Hoya Diffuser filter. Coupled with the Viltrox 23mm F/1.4, I went in search of images and to see the affect this filter gives.
First some background. As you all know, I like to occasionally try and recreate the “film” look with digital. However, through all the tweaking with colours, there’s aways one thing missing, and that is the actual “look”. Film isn’t like digital, and highlights and shadows merge different, and the sharpness is different and the “feel” is different. I have seen some using filters to combat this, and a diffuser (under certain conditions) seems to fit the bill.
Anyway, before I let you know how I feel about this filter, here is the video from the day, followed by the images. I didn’t take many images, and I apologise that they are not up to my usual standard, but the area I was photographing just didn’t offer me anything.
Here are the images from the day. All EXIF data can be found in the images.
I was hugely disappointed at looking at my photos, I had a few that I like, but as I was using the filter all the time, I found shooting towards the sun was really a bad idea with the filter on. Shooting away from the sun, was fine and the sky and everything else was good, so not all was lost. As for the overall look. This filter is made for portraits and landscapes, and I think under different circumstances it will be perfectly good to use. It’s not a filter for every shot, but when it works, I like it. It really does give an analogue feel by reducing sharpness and merging contrasts in a very different way to straight out digital photographs.
Looking at my images as presented on this page now, I don’t feel too bad. Combined with the RetroChroma recipe, they certainly have a certain look about them. And of course, because I shoot raw and jpeg, they are easy enough to convert as I need to.
I love the 23mm for all the reasons I said in the video, it’s fantastic and rarely leaves my camera. I have plenty of zoom lenses, and I do use them, but this lens is just so fantastic. I would be happy to just have this lens! I’ve had it long enough now, and can’t imagine getting rid of it, as I love it’s focal lenght and most importantly it’s character.
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I am a semi-professional photographer who runs a weekly meeting photography group as well as numerous Facebook groups (Great Photography Walks South Wales and Fujifilm Lovers Worldwide Group). I also have a brand-new blog website dedicated to various other things which I like to call The Ramblings Of A Welshman. I hope you can join me there; you might find it interesting! You’ll find my YouTube Channel Here!
One Camera One Lens 
Hey Mark, the video was great again.
I also liked the interaction on the latter with the fellow photographers.
The pictures ? am not much of a fan of diffuser or mist type filters, I’m just being honest.
I think they also fit better in specific applications such as wedding, portrait photography and also evening city shots. But all in all great impressions of a beautiful environment. Marc.
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I definitely agree with you on the filter. I’ve had mixed feedback on it. I’ll only be using them on specific things from now on! Glad you enjoyed! I’ll get more group participation in the future.
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