The great Tiffen mystery

Xylo · Oct 5, 2023

Last weekend, I went garage sale hopping and I got a couple of Tiffen square filters.
But one of them puzzles me to no end. The only thing engraved on it is Tiffen F1.
I tried contacting Tiffen but their customer support just got stumped, so I'm turning to the best source of miscellaneous information I know...
The filter is a 3x3 inch square filter. I know it's some sort of diffusion filter. But that's about it.
It came in it's padded fabric pouch without any other label stuck to the velcro on the front of the flap.

Here's a picture of the etched label.

Anybody have any idea of what the heck it is?

Dustin McAmera · Oct 5, 2023

F for fog?

3X3 FOG 1 FILTER

Fog Filter Mimics the effect of natural fog Creates a soft glow and flare Produces a warm romantic tone Lighter grades take the edge off excess contrast and...

web.archive.org

Xylo · Oct 5, 2023

Could be, the guy who sold it to me works as a photographer professionally, so I guess it would have been a good addition for weddings and portraits.
And the code would be consistent with their numbering.

I'm surprised that they didn't know about this. I would have expected them to know their old products better, or at least have at least one person in the office who knows about this.

Thanks!

Sirius Glass · Oct 5, 2023

Could it be for soft focus for portraits? Mount it in front of a lens and view it with and without the filter.

Xylo · Oct 5, 2023

That's pretty much my guess so far.

BrianShaw · Oct 5, 2023

Xylo said:
Could be, the guy who sold it to me works as a photographer professionally, so I guess it would have been a good addition for weddings and portraits.
And the code would be consistent with their numbering.

I'm surprised that they didn't know about this. I would have expected them to know their old products better, or at least have at least one person in the office who knows about this.

Thanks!

In many areas this is increasingly becoming problematic. Especially by call centers and marketing reps. Corporate takeovers, etc along with employee turnover seems to have severely reduce knowledge of past products, processes, etc. I've only been retired 2.6 years and periodically get phone calls from my former employer about the past because nobody seems to remember it. So that situation at Tiffen doesn't surprise me at all!

But you 're right... somebody know the answer. It seems to be @Dustin McAmera in this situation.

Xylo · Oct 5, 2023

BrianShaw said:
I've only been retired 2.6 years and periodically get phone calls from my former employer about the past

This is quite common it seems. Like Ricoh/Pentax who had to call two of their former engineers to the rescue as nobody in the office could figure out how to design a 35mm film advance mechanism... yet nobody seems to have thought of simply getting a used K-1000 and tearing it apart to see how the thing works.

MattKing · Oct 5, 2023

Xylo said:
This is quite common it seems. Like Ricoh/Pentax who had to call two of their former engineers to the rescue as nobody in the office could figure out how to design a 35mm film advance mechanism... yet nobody seems to have thought of simply getting a used K-1000 and tearing it apart to see how the thing works.

It probably is more a problem of designing a way of efficiently manufacturing such a mechanism, including how to predict where the stressors are and how to build in the appropriate strengths of mechanism to deal with them.

Xylo · Oct 7, 2023

Probably. For having designed a sprocket drive for a pinhole camera, I can wholly agree that it's a difficult thing to do (I'll even go as far as saying that designing one alone is a bit masochistic). But I feel it's not something that a bit of reverse engineering couldn't have solved.

And BTW, I finally got an answer from Tiffen and it really is a 3x3 Fog 1 filter... And Dustin wins the race by about 4 days

MTGseattle · Oct 7, 2023

As an addendum to filter issues, when did "tri" enter the vernacular? As-in tri-red, tri-yellow, etc. Is that just the very short way of describing a filter that needs 3 stops of correction? I had never heard this until about a month ago.

Dustin McAmera · Oct 7, 2023

Maybe tri is tri-colour? This refers to filters used for colour separation; where you take three monochrome negatives through strong red, blue, and green filters, then combine them to make a true colour image. It's a niche pastime these days though - seems unlikely they'd name the filter for it.

Romanko · Oct 8, 2023

Dustin McAmera said:
Maybe tri is tri-colour?

Trichrome?

MTGseattle · Oct 8, 2023

Dustin is the filter whisperer. You are exactly right, and it sounds like a funky process (I did a quick web search).
"Tri-color green" equates to the Wratten #58
"Tri-red" is Wratten #25
"Tri-blue" is Wratten #47b

I had simply never heard anyone refer to filters as "tri" anything, so I was confused. The general viewpoint is that a Wratten 25 needs 4 stops of compensation. My initial guess was also wrong. Sigh.

Xylo · Oct 9, 2023

Tri-chrome process was really popular with publications before Kodachrome came out.
I've seen pictures of tri-chrome cameras and they were definitely not your average run of the mill thing.

BrianShaw · Oct 9, 2023

If I’m not mistaken, color separation remained a popular printing practice a long time after Kodachrome came out. In the 1980’s there was a printer in the building behind where I worked so many mornings I’d look in their trash bin… lots of interesting “reject” color separation negs.

Romanko · Oct 9, 2023

Xylo said:
Tri-chrome process was really popular

Prokudin-Gorskii perfected trichrome by the early 1900s. His collection is in the Library of Congress:

About this Collection | Prokudin-Gorskii Collection | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

(Originally published under the title “The Prokudin-Gorskii Collection of Early 20th Century Color Photographs of Russia at the Library of Congress: Unexpected Consequences of the Digitization of the Collection, 2000-2017,” in Slavic & East European Information Resources, 18 no.3/4 (Fall/winter...

www.loc.gov

Xylo · Oct 10, 2023

Romanko said:
Prokudin-Gorskii perfected trichrome by the early 1900s.

Yes, I have the book "Photographs for the Tzar" which highlights some of the photos he took on an assignment to show the sovereign what his country looked like.
He used a camera with three lenses, so there is a bit of offset in the color filtration.

But with the cameras used by publications, they had a single long lens with internal beam splitters so that the registration is perfect.

The great Tiffen mystery

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