This weekend, I believe I learned how to keep the diffusion in control, by slightly underexposing to retain a bit of the focus. When I expose as usual, too much light is let in through the diffusion holes in the aperture disc, which completely washes out the brightest parts of the image. The flip side is that underexposure may push noise in the shadows to unwanted levels, but usually that’s not a problem to me since I can either use or suppress it during the b+w processing.

I must also say that I sometimes like the sun ray effect you get around direct light sources within the viewframe. To much of them, and the image is completely spoiled, but when the light source is not too bright, the result may occasionally look really lovely. Okay, it’s almost not photography any more, but anyway. In the image above, the rays came through a bit too strong, but I liked them anyway. It’s like the sign points in that direction, and as if there were blinking lights over there that called for you.

I think I’m getting a grip of this little creature now. But I have also started to look around for other ways to get the diffusion effect. I would love to use for instance my Summilux, which is both sharp and contrasty, together with a diffusion filter. I have seen that there are Schneider filters for still photography, previously only being available for motion film equipment. There are filters for overall softness (Classic soft), but the one I found most interesting diffuses only on the lighter areas in the view and retains all shadows (Black frost). They seem to come with a hefty price tag, though… The classic solution to use a pair of stockings is perhaps the most viable solution, who knows, black stockings might do the trick with the shadows.