There are some moments when photography feels like pure science, and others when it feels like mischievous magic. Using SZ Filters on your camera’s lens makes your images sit squarely in the latter camp. These aren’t the filters you attach to “improve” sharpness or hide your mistakes. They challenge you to do the one thing you are often warned against: shoot directly into the light. Most of us spend years turning our lenses away from headlights, streetlamps, and harsh sun rays. The Midas Touch and the Psyco Black Hole help flip that rule on its head. Point your lens bravely into the chaos, and watch the magic unfold. One turns highlights into molten gold. The other feels like pressing your eye against a keyhole and entering another dimension.
Table of Contents
The Big Picture: SZ Filters – Midas Touch and Psyco Black Hole Review
SZ Filters isn’t being subtle. Their lineup is a candy store of cinematic oddities and eccentricities. The Midas Touch, part of the Liquid Series, traps drifting gold particles in a fluid that scatters light into halos. Rotate it, tilt it, or let it flow, and your highlights shimmer with a golden glow that looks impossible to fake in post. The Psyco Black Hole, from their Psyco Series, goes for psychedelic distortion instead of glow. Put your subject in the center, and it almost looks as if swallowed by a vortex. These two filters couldn’t be more different from each other, and possibly every other filter you’ve owned, but they share the same belief: photography is more enjoyable when you break the rules.
- Looks you cannot replicate convincingly in post (without some major VFX tools)
- Super fun, unpredictable, but lots of fun
- You’ll want to keep experimenting with them more and more
- Premium build with a solid feel
- Dynamic for video because the effects move as you move
- Everyone who meets you will be so interested in what you have on your lens and even more keen to see the results
- Midas Touch can look messy and take a lot of patience to get images with it done right. You really need a strong opposing light source
- Psyco Black Hole is interesting, but limited in its novelty value at a shoot. There’s only so many frames you can take with it at a location
Experience and Handling
The first time I used the Midas Touch, I thought I had received a bad filter. I shot with strobes in a controlled studio, expecting gold sparkles to pop into my frames. Instead, most shots looked like a smoky haze. Sometimes, there were no sparkles at all. My success rate was around ten percent, maybe even less. Frustration built up quickly as I painstakingly counted about 5 useful frames in a 2-hour shoot, where I could see sparkles and glitter peppered throughout the frame. Of course, this wasn’t enough for me to post in this review article, and I went back to the SZ Filters website to see what I was doing wrong. From a quick read through of the instructions page, it didn’t seem like anything was wrong at all. I had strong light sources pointing into the filter from varying angles. The filter was screwed on the right way, and it seemed like there was enough glitter inside the lens, too. But I gave up that day and decided to take a stab at this filter another day. Weeks later, I tried again. This time, it was a different studio, a different model, and a different light source pointed into the lens. Same success rate. I didn’t think I would have any more success that day, until my friend Stanley, who was also shooting with me there, told me to try taking pictures of the model by the window, with the sunlight beaming through at 10am. If he hadn’t nudge me in that direction, literally, I probably would have not discovered what I was doing wrong. The strobes firing in the background of the model were throwing off the glitter reflections completely!
Against the sunlight, the real magic of the Midas Touch showcased itself. One full turn of the filter, and as the glitter began falling down, sparks of light started to dance across the frame, looking like a crackling fire on a winter’s day. Even the models were thrilled to see the results and began asking for more shots. Each click was unlike the other, but each had the potential to mesmerize you with the results. After that shoot was when everything clicked. The strobes had ruined the effect, overwhelming the subtle flecks of glitter. But in the sunlight, the filter came to life. Orbs, sparkles, and golden crowns flowed into the frame. Sometimes the glitter casually appeared in spots; other times it cascaded across the whole scene. The unpredictability is the real draw of the SZ Filters Midas Touch. You stop trying to control it and start responding to its randomness. Using the Midas Touch is part game, part ritual. Tilt the filter slightly, and particles drift like lazy sparks in syrup. Rotate it, and halos shift around your subject’s head. The effect makes you and your subject feel so alive. The inconsistency might worry some photographers. For me it became addictive, especially more so after I realised how much I had missed out on by not getting it right during the first shoot. When it works, it really makes you want to shoot from every possible angle of the light hitting the filter, just to see if it can get an even crazier result.
The Psyco Black Hole is simpler but still wild. There’s no liquid here, no drifting particles. You hold it up, and the world immediately caves inward. Subjects at the center remain sharp, their edges calm and defined. Around them, the frame spirals into swirls of purple, magenta, and even rainbow streaks, depending on your background light. It feels like looking at your subject through the event horizon of a psychedelic tunnel. The effect can be subtle with careful framing or completely chaotic if you let light sources bleed in at the edges. It was kind of like shooting for a James Bond poster where the hero is showcased through an illustrated gun barrel, but more colourful and wilder. Unlike the Midas Touch, you can shoot at a wide angle with the Psyco Black Hole filter. It doesn’t create an unusable vignette like the Midas, and I would recommend that you always try varying the focal length for the same scene with this filter.
In one frame, our model wearing sunglasses sits calmly in the center while deep magenta and crimson rings swirl around her. It almost looks like she’s stepping out of a portal. The background blurs and bends, pulling light into the center. I would love to shoot a music video someday with this filter. The results would feel surreal, almost like sci-fi. The effect works best when your subject is right in the middle. The eyes stay sharp, and the textures in clothing remain clear while the chaos appears only at the edges. Move off-center, and the spiral takes over, engulfing your subject in distortion.
Both filters feel like quality products, not just in the metal but also in the glass. The rings are sturdy, and the Midas Touch’s liquid core feels solid for real-world use. They’re slim enough to carry easily, though stacking them on wide lenses will cause vignetting. In fact, they really can’t be used at all focal lengths, as you’ll see in the next section. Treat them like a lens, not just an accessory, and they’ll hold up. The Psyco is a fingerprint magnet.
Image Results
All images seen here were taken on a Nikon Z8 with a Nikon Z 24-120mm f4 lens. The filters were both 77mm in size.
Conclusion
SZ Filters make you care more about emotion than perfection. The Midas Touch is meant for those seeking dreamy results with a dash of shimmer and a surreal cinematic feel. The Psyco Black Hole is for risk takers who want distortion, wild edges, and images that seem pulled from another dimension. Both filters share the same message. Stop avoiding the light. Let it in your lens in the most random ways to get unpredictably cool results. These are not tools for correcting mistakes; they are tools for breaking rules. If you want a versatile filter that enhances portraits and makes golden hour shine, choose the Midas Touch. If you prefer something bolder and more chaotic, go for the Psyco Black Hole. Either way, you’ll end up with frames that software can’t replicate. Sometimes, that’s the main reason to pick up a camera in the first place.
Declaration of Journalistic Intent
The Phoblographer is one of the last standing dedicated photography publications that speaks to both art and tech in our articles. We put declarations up front in our reviews to adhere to journalistic standards that several publications abide by. These help you understand a lot more about what we do:
- At the time of publishing this review, SZ Filters isn’t running direct-sold advertising with the Phoblographer. This doesn’t affect our reviews anyway and it never has in our 15 years of publishing our articles. This article is in no way sponsored.
- None of the reviews on the Phoblographer are sponsored. That’s against FTC laws, and we adhere to them just the same way that newspapers, magazines, and corporate publications do.
- SZ Filters sent us the filters for review. There was no money exchange between us or their 3rd party partners and the Phoblographer for this to happen. Manufacturers trust the Phoblographer’s reviews, as they are incredibly blunt.
- SZ Filters knows that it cannot influence the site’s reviews. If we don’t like something or if we have issues with it, we’ll let our readers know.
- The Phoblographer’s standards for reviewing products have become much stricter. After having the world’s largest database of real-world lens reviews, we choose not to review anything we don’t find innovative or unique, and in many cases, products that lack weather resistance. Unless something is very unique, we probably won’t touch it.
- In recent years, brands have withheld NDA information from us or stopped working with us because they feel they cannot control our coverage. These days, many brands will not give products to the press unless they get favorable coverage. In other situations, we’ve stopped working with several brands for ethical issues. Either way, we report as honestly and rawly as humanity allows.
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More can be found on our Disclaimers page.
Images of me were taken by my friend and fellow photographer Stanley Paul; used with permission