USER REVI EW | I BE OPT I CS EFFECT F I LTERS
IBE OPTICS EFFECT FILTERS PR I CE FROM £ 7 1 1 / $TBC IBE Optics has some beautifully made effect filters that can fulfil your every flare dream, or serve up something much more subtle
WORDS JUL I AN M I TCHELL / P I CTURES R I NA YANG
“THE FLARES ARE UNIQUE – ADD THE COLOURS AND IT’S PRETTY AMAZING”
n film technology, filters have always helped camera operators to design their films. New
episodes of Top Boy last year and has worked with FKA Twigs on her video short Home With You . “I’ve used them on maybe four or five projects over the course of a month, I wanted to use them for a while and they were perfect for an upcoming music video project. I chose 15 from the range as I wanted some unique flares and that is this range’s strength,” Yang says. “The flares are unique and, add the colours to them, it’s pretty amazing. So far the use has been mainly on commercials and music videos, not so much on narrative projects. I was using Red Atmosphere, Red Shine and the Impressive range, which has an interesting shape of flare. I lit with red light anyway, so wondered what it would look like. You would have to be very sure on your shots to use them in a movie or episodic, but they definitely have a place there if you wanted something more stylised – in a sequence, for instance.” She adds: “Generally, you really use them for the flares and the bokeh. With something like Atmosphere, you can see the colours picked out in the highlights and the shadows. The Organics are a bit more subtle in colours and shapes. I would be tempted to buy three or four, which would be more of the stylised flare filters than anything else. I would definitely recommend them.”
‘Impressive’? Not so much. Bokeh has three different choices; there are also three for Shine, Organic/Rainbow/ Golden Fleece, grouped together for their art aesthetic; Atmosphere with colours of red, blue and ice blue; and some general softener filters with names like Black Romance and Black Soft Focus. (See panel on the next page for more filter descriptions.) For these filters, IBE Optics only used hand-picked materials, such as different fabrics, nets or natural materials, like the seed of dandelions or horsehair, which then are carefully arranged within the filter. Depending on focal length, aperture, kind of backlight, light intensity, light placement or colour temperature, you can generate various artistic looks. The strongest effects can generally be reached with telefocal lengths. USING THE FILTERS We asked cinematographer Rina Yang what she thought of these new aesthetic filters. Yang shot three
film stocks tried to change that with an encouragement to shoot without baking in any in-camera look. And when digital cinematography arrived, that advice remained and cinematographers were again encouraged just to underexpose their shots and leave the manipulation up to the burgeoning digital intermediate world. The results were mixed – Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? being perhaps the zenith of this out- of-control colour playground. It is to cinematographers’ great relief that products like IBE Optics’ new aesthetic optical filters are now available, as baking in looks or in- camera manipulation can return to ‘in the moment’ decision-making. The new range is relatively large and doesn’t seem to reduce stop values, which was always the curse of putting glass over glass. The filter names try their best to describe what they do, but shooters will always have their favourites. Some of the names, such as ‘Bokeh’, are obvious;
LEFT The IBE Optics Effect Filters use hand- picked materials for artistic and unique results
48 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 2020
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