Filters & Story: Interview with Ira Tiffen
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Ira Tiffen has been developing and creating filters and specialized optics for film for over 40 years. Not only is he a passionate, creative collaborator with film professionals, but he has been a strong advocate for the use of filters to give your images and story that extra special bit of magic.
In this video, Ira goes over the importance of filters, one of his favorite uses of filters in film (spoiler: IT'S TOP GUN!) and gives us his list of 5 must-have filters to look into as you're getting started.
Thanks so much to Schneider Optics and Ira for visiting RJFS and lending their time and expertise. If you want to check out some of the filters mentioned, you can visit their site here:
www.schneidero...
Wanna learn more? A filter demo video is on the way!
In the mean time, you can ask us questions directly in our forum! j.mp/IraTiffenI...
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Questions about our sponsors and how they work? A video on that soon, but we have an open policy and can answer your questions directly on our forums: discuss.rocketj...
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Arguably one of the most informative interviews on filters I have ever watched. Ira Tiffen you are a Godsend. I'm a filmmaker with a huge thirst to learn everything I can. I'm going to purchase all 5 of those filters (one at a time probably lol). God bless the RocketJump Film School.
Hey so how it goes with the 5
This was a super informative and pretty adorable video, since Lauren is so obviously trying to keep her cool in front of Ira.
Thanks! I'm gonna rent some filters and shoot with them soon to see if I can start incorporating them into my films.
5 years later what u can say about the filters I wana buy one but don’t know what
I really like that you made a video about filters, it's just like he said, they are often forgotten.
Haha Lauren looks so stoked.
I am not going to lie I'm properly jealous. Did he tell you about any top secret filters in dev?
I really needed this
I want someone to look at me the way Lauren looks at Ira Tiffen! :P
Another great video from the RJFS Team! :D
Just try to speak slowly like your words are very important. Their eyes will glaze over & they'll slowly drift into a hypnotic state. It helps if you're older & the other person wants to show respect by not looking away :)
Fantastic, informative video!! Variable ND filters have saved my bacon when my studio strobes broke and would only shoot at their maximum brightness. In order to get an acceptable exposure, I was able to knock the light down with a ND filter and keep shooting.
Lauren, you look so beautiful in that demo shot!!
That was great, thanks for sharing! I'm stoked for the filter demo video :D
This is so freaking great! Thank you RJFS!
I loved this video it open my horizon. Thanks guys. Let t the creativity begin.
I'm so glad that this was done! I learned a lot
Which ones u recommend for me
The other day i was watching Better call Saul and I notice that blackness banding in the sky. I thought they added it in post. Good thing I found this video, I would have never guessed it was filters over the lens, quite interesting definitely going to have to look into them.
It's 2021 and we are watching this again.
So what advice u got for me I wana buy one but don’t know which one
It would be great a video about filter stacking, when you throw more than one into the mix :)
Love this episode !! Have you guys done episode on "In camera, filtering function" of a digital camera ? Especially new products that are just made for the casual users are impressive. Since you've gone miles to cover the traditional craftsmanship, I'm curious to know where the technology
Another great great video - Thank you!
Really good questions.Well Done
Great and informative Video!
Great video! Thanks for this interview
Which one u recommend
Excellent content!
I fricking love Top Gun.
Is there someone with a saxophone in the next door room?!
Great knowledge sir ji. This is Azlan Arain khan cinematographer Bollywood in Indian Cinema.
was that the NX1? the most underrated camera ever made!
Stan Getz? Great interview.
Curious, which diffusion filter was used in War of the Worlds? Was it a different one in each one of those scenes you reference in this video?
Looks like I need to get me some filters!
Would you be able to provide the types of of filters you used in your examples? Like 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 etc? I think that would also be helpful for people to see how strong some of these filters are to achieve those looks. People were asking about the digicon and I'd be very curious as to how strong that filter is since you A/B'd the image together.
I'd never heard of the Digicon Filter before, I'm going to check that out.
5 years later what u say about the digicon
It's conspicuous but I still love the way CSI Miami did it.
The diffusion filter, can't those effects be added in post? How is in-camera diffusion better than what is possible in After Effects?
Really hard to see the difference with the Digicon filter. The background looks softer & some of the foreground got sharper. Can someone explain it a bit simpler than the video?
The dynamic range he is talking about, is kind of like this.
the pixels on a computer monitor have 250 values, 0 being black, 250 being white, split between 3 channels : Red Green and Blue. A combination of these 3 values give you 64 million possible color combinations or something.
A filter that increases the dynamic range would increase these numbers to say 500... 0 being black and 500 being white, again split between 3 channels, Which gives you like a billion different possible color combinations.
That's an over-exaggeration, but its the same principle.
When you take film with higher dynamic range, when you go to color grade in post, you have more data...information to mess around with because you have more "pixels" with more values and combinations...so to speak.
To put it another way, Digital cameras operate much like the pixels...They take data absorbed and attribute it to a set of values. If there was a color that can't be recreated by these 64 million values, the camera will attribute the closest value it can to what it has absorbed. Let's say you have a color in your scene that is 1812 Red 0523 Green and 3428 Blue, and you are capturing it with a camera with not enough dynamic range, the camera will attribute those numbers as 181 Red, 52 Green and 343 Blue.
If i'm wrong, hopefully someone will come by and correct me but i'm pretty sure that's how it works.
Very interesting, thanks a lot!
Most if not all the filters mentioned in this interview are for outdoors and daytime usage, how about some suggestions for indoors and night scenes (indoor and outdoors?)
+RocketJump Film School, you are absolutely right. Thank you for the link it was educational.
This is epic
I'm taking an intro college course to photography and filmmaking and I've never heard the word "T-stop". Can someone help me out with the difference between an "F-stop" and "T-stop"? Are they the same thing?
from my understanding of it
F stop is a mathmatical equation. Were as T stop is measured by hand for each particular lens
***** Thank you so much!
2:18. I do too.
Very informative video +RocketJump Film School but I know this is really nitpicky but the whole image of the interview looks the contrast is really low especially lauren's face I know you guys do this in camera to get more control over colors but it looks like you forgot to fix it in post
He was part of Tiffen family business for 21 years before going to Schneider Optics 😅
How the hell does that digicon work? What kind of magic is that? Black magic?
No, it's light magic.
Ba Dum Tsss..?
> okay, i'll get that five filters.
> *sees prices*
> HOLYFVKNGSHIT.jpg
He invented Tiffen? Whaaaaat
#fixitinpost
He is right. There is still future for filters. People will soon be tired with the shitload of digital color correction and manipulation we see today.
+johannes914 Yeah. I try to minimize all Post Production work. So I get as much as possible on Camera. Honestly Filters are amazing! They can do way more than Digital Workflow can't. And it helps you get the best Picture.
Well, I'm sold. Goodbye my money
(;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)
Would filters be the job of the Director of Photography or someone else?
hi
Its a bit funny, because Ira (Ира, full Ирина (Irina)) in russian is strictly woman name, so I actually thought that the creator of Tiffen is a woman :) anyway, interesting video, thanks a lot for sharing :)
screw google and ads
I need 43mm 85B. Filter please!! No one makes that size..... Sigh!
Nice, TY for the info appreciate it!
If anything I will get this step-up ring.
Trying to use the filter for my rangerfinder and I just don't like extra pieces dangling around.
This video reminds me of a question I meant to ask during the Twitch stream about Movie FX lighting capture with Benji doing the Dekkard. OFF to the FORUMS!!
Jesus Christ, how could anyone confuse Kaminsky with Mullen?? If I were you I would cut that part out in the edit..