The CineBloom Diffusion Filter from Moment helps you achieve a dreamy, film-like effect in your footage. With various densities, these filter softens hard edges, smooths skin tones, and reduces the appearance of wrinkles. It catches and blooms light, creating a more organic and natural feel to your digital photography. The filter’s ring is made from aerospace-grade metal, designed to be thin enough to stack underneath other filters without affecting the field of view. This enables you to add a neutral density or variable neutral density filter on top to capture motion blur and shoot at cinematic frame rates.
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Moment CineBloom Diffusion Filters – ShopMoment – Amazon – B&H – Adorama
The Moment Cinebloom filter operates differently from the Kenko, Tiffen Black Mist, or K&F Black Diffusion filters that I have. They utilize a white halation effect as opposed to a black halation effect. White halation filters spread the mist throughout the entire frame, whereas black mist filters keep the mist more localized with a more defined halation around the lighting. Tiffen also offers white halation filters, such as the regular Pro-Mist filters or the Glimmerglass, that provide a similar look, but Moment filters are just as durable and currently less expensive.
The Moment Diffusion filter employs fine white nanoparticles, but it doesn’t feature any coatings. As a result, you achieve a soft mist filter effect with an added haze from the way light interacts with the filter. The light hits the filter, causing additional ghosting and flare, which then interacts with the nanoparticles to create a more organic, classic feel.
I’m preferring the uncoated diffusion filters as I also really like the Tiffen Black Pro-Mist filter which produces a totally different look. It’s also uncoated but uses black particles. See my Tiffen Black Pro Mist Filter Review.
Moment Cinebloom Diffusion Filter Review
In this review, I’m utilizing the Moment Cinebloom Diffusion filter at 10% in combination with the Nikon Z6 and 50mm f1.8 lens.
What makes these filters exceptional is the subtle glow they create, which gives a touch of classic aesthetics to our modern lenses. This effect reminds me of a more exaggerated “Leica Glow” that you get from older classic lenses before the advent of modern coatings, the Helios 44-2 lenses come to mind. Alternatively, you can even get a subtle glow with some of the modern classic lenses that use single coatings or no coatings, like the Voigtlander SC lenses and even some of my Kipon lenses produce a nice glow in some situations. Now with these filters, you can add extra character to any lens without compromising image quality.
Moment primarily markets these filters to videographers and cinematographers, but I find them particularly useful for street photography. They help to remove some of the digital crispness to create a film-like appearance, which is the look I’m going for. Film stocks, especially films like Cinestill which have removed the remjet layer, can produce blooming or halation in the highlights, and these filters replicate some of that effect on digital cameras.
I’ve included a sample image taken during the day that exemplifies the effect of the filter. The highlights have a halation that is very reminiscent of film stocks. When I apply my Aged presets on top of this, I achieve a look that is incredibly close to a film-like appearance.
Unedited Sample At Night
Unedited Samples – Day
Moment Diffusion Filter Build Quality
The Moment soft filters consist of white nanoparticles sandwiched between two layers of Japanese glass. The filter ring is crafted from aerospace-grade metal, precisely machined for quality. Although the official material used is not disclosed, the language implies that it is most likely aluminum. Despite this, the filter still feels superior to other cheaper brands. The metal material has a softer texture, while cheaper filters have a cold and hollow feel to them.
It’s worth noting that aluminum filters can sometimes become stuck on lenses, as I’ve experienced with a K&F filter. I had to put the lens in the freezer before finally removing the filter. However, I have not encountered this issue with the Moment filter. In comparison, B+W filters, which use brass material, have never caused this issue for me.
We’ll see how these Moment filters hold up, and I have to say they do feel really nice compared to the cheaper brands. They are very smooth when you screw them on or take them off, unlike the cheaper ones which feel almost sandy or gritty and gross.
The additional red accent to the lens also looks really nice with Nikon mirrorless or some Leica cameras which also use red in the design.
The Cinebloom Diffusion filters come in three different powers – 5% – 10% and 20%. I bought the 10% and that’s what you see here. Keep in mind, if you buy the 5% and think you’ll get less of an effect, you will, but the glass is still uncoated and you’ll still get a glare or a softening of contrast when in bright lighting.
– You can see here in this sample, a soft diffusion on the lights, but then in the very bright lights of the background, there is almost a glow. Also around the bright areas, the contrast is a little softer and the blacks feel a little lifted because of the way the light is scattered.
Moment Cinebloom Diffusion Filter Review | Bottom Line
There are several soft filter brands available in the market, each with a unique appearance. Some soft filters are multicoated or uncoated with black particles, while others are uncoated coated and use white particles. You may have heard of Tiffen Glimmerglass or just their Pro-Mist filters.
Out of all the soft filters, the Moment filters stand out as one of my favorites due to their uncoated, high-quality metal build. Another filter that I really appreciate is the Tiffen Black Pro-Mist at 1/4, which offers a more controlled look. I highly recommend both of these filters.
The build quality of the Moment filters is top-notch and on par with Tiffen filters. Additionally, the red ring design adds a cool look, and the bright color makes it easy to spot when the filter is attached to your lens.
Sample Images – 10% Power
These sample images are all shot on the Nikon Z6 with the Z 50mm f1.8 and colored with my Core Presets. For these night shots, I shot with the cloudy white balance which gives me very orange and yellow photos under this lighting, and I also under-exposed by about 1 stop. I used the Nikon Standard Profile since it adds a nice blend to the colors compared to Adobe Color or Adobe Standard which feels a little harsh at times. On top of that, I layered my presets and did very little editing other than that.
