Novelty filters and corrective filters should both have a place in your arsenal. Building your kit is easy if you shoot one thing or another frequently. I suppose a stronger filter will be needed to get the foggy effect on establishing and wider shots and a weaker one for the medium and actor?s close ups? Fog filters don't really look like natural fog -- later, Harrison developed the Double-Fog filter to improve on the idea of a fog effect, by combining Fogs and Low Cons into one filter basically. And they made graduated Fogs called "Scenic Fogs" to localize the effect better to one part of the frame.

Grades of 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 2, 3, and 4 are also available where this filter type's effect becomes approximately twice as strong with each grade number increase. I have a music video to shoot where I was asked to give it a foggy London kind of mood. There will be fog machines too, although just the kind you buy in party stores or Home Depot. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to finally get my smoque filters. The video is composed of night interiors and exteriors (with the foggy London effect).On another note, since we are talking here already, I have a lighting related question and I thought I would just ask it here instead of opening a new thread for it. In case it grows too much within this thread maybe the mods can break it up. Fog filters basically have mist particles that cause bright areas to glow into dark areas, as if you had breathed on the lens and fogged it up.

I recently used the Smoque #1 to give a faint haze to a scene filmed in a large church chapel that I was not allowed to smoke up. We should clarify that this doesn't really include cut-out effects intended to change the shape of the light entering the camera. Instead, the focus here is on a glass or plastic plate that modifies the image as a whole.

Thanks David. I'm looking for a filter to help matching close ups of master shots with smoke/fog produced by a fog machine. Normally if you just use the fog machine for the close up it doesn't work very well because the fog is either too much or too little. I heard a filter helps but I am not sure if I should I get a fog or a smoque. But given your explanation, it seems the smoque would be the one? Also what grade? Thanks again. Camera filtration occurs at the head of the camera. Any time you put something in front of the lens, you change the character of the image that the camera captures.