Earlier this year, Tiffen announced its new fusion filters, which combine its iconic Glimmerglass or Pro-Mist filters with CPLs. These are following the trends of other brands making stuff like this. In some cases, another brand would make them in collaboration with a social media photographer. Besides getting rid of reflections, CPL filters are often designed to also remove glare when shooting portrait photography. They often do this by offering better contrast in the photo, which essentially negates some of the effects of Glimmerglass. Considering that Glimmerglass filters are my favorite thing, I was very curious about what they did. And at least in some ways, they might have ruined it.
Tiffen sent us the filters to keep; but I’ve purchased lots of Glimmerglass filters all on my own. What glimmerglass does is different from Pro Mist. While Pro Mist softens the entire image, Glimmerglass uses little specs on the scene that both soften and give lot of halation to light sources. The softening effect is often less than Pro Mist, but the halation effect is stronger. My favorite are the Warm Pro Mist filters.
Here’s how Tiffen describes their filters:
- Black Pro-Mist + VND: This filter reduces highlights, lowers contrast, and softens facial lines, giving your images a smooth, cinematic appearance. It also offers up to 8 stops of light control, which is ideal for blurs and special effects.
- Glimmerglass® + VND: This one also provides a soft, radiant glow to highlights while improving the image with a subtle sparkle effect. One can control light up to 8 stops to create creating dreamlike visuals.
- Black Pro-Mist® + CPL: Like the VND, this will control highlights and contrast while increasing image depth and softening facial features. With CPL, one can also remove unwanted reflections, especially on glass and water. Furthermore, photographers can now enhance the sky’s blue color and details of the clouds.
- Glimmerglass® + CPL: Users will get bright highlights with a subtle sparkle, smooth facial lines, reduced reflections, and added contrast to clouds with this one.
The Tiffen Fusion filters are stacked Glimmerglass and CPL. So they’re big, thick, filters, and have the rotational action that you’d expect from a CPL.
Specifically, Tiffen sent us a filter with less diffusion via Glimmerglass. And I realize that this is a situation where I truly should’ve asked for the stronger effect for my liking. That’s because the CPL tends to cut down a bit on the reflections and halations. While it’s supposed to surely cut down on reflections, it does so to the point where you wouldn’t even really think that they’re using glimmerglass at all. In fact, I considered even stacking this filter on top of another piece of Glimmerglass to get more of an effect. If you already own Glimmerglass, you could totally do this and be very happy with the results. In fact, when I stacked it with my bronze glimmerglass, I got the look that I was going for. It’s not uncommon these days to see photographers stacking lens filters for more of an effect. But when I stacked the Fusion Filter with Glimmerglass Bronze, I got a lot more control over my image — and that brought me so much more joy. I could do that, use in-camera presets on my Leica or Panasonic camera bodies, and use specific white balances to get the look I wanted.
We know that you want to see photos of the effects on and off, so here they are.
In some images, you can tell that the CPL is cutting down on the reflections and halation that you’d otherwise embrace with Glimmerglass. For this reason, you should go with a stronger variant of the filter or use it in combination with more Glimmerglass. The point overall of using lens filters like this, though, is so that you don’t need to do more post-production to get the look that you want. And essentially, that’s still the case.
So, if you’re using the Tiffen Fusion Filters alone at a lower strength, then you may consider the effect to be ruined. But if you stack it on top of your existing filters or reach for the options with the higher strength, then you’ll have a huge smile on your face. If you own a weaker Glimmerglass filter and you also get a weaker fusion filter, you might have the most control. Interested? Check them out on Amazon.