Unusual Vintage Filters? Sliding Filters from the 60's

[Devon Green]

I picked up some vintage camera equipment today and I discovered some very unusual filters. They are from the 1960?s.

 

One filter measures 13X 2 ½ and is labeled ?Mitchell Diffusion Clear to D? as well as another labeled Fog 1/8 to 4

 

I also have two sets of 4 filters measuring 8X3 and also labeled ?Sliding? and ?Clear to D?

 

I believe these are called sliding filters and there seems to be a reference to them in Cliff Hancuff?s post here http://www.cinematography.net/Vaseline_Effect.htm

There is also a company that has ?Sliding Mitchell diffusion? filter listed under special applications here http://www.redmanmovies.com/rentals/equipm...?categoryID=200

 

I am still unclear about what these filters did/could do. So the question is are these filters useful for anything today or are they worth anything?

 

Thanks!

[David Mullen ASC]

Sliding Mitchells were mainly for shots that moved from wide to tight onto some actress' face. Sometimes with graduated Fogs and whatnot, for doing a transition into a dream or fantasy sequence.

[Mark Dunn]

By the way, I have an old set of 6x6 inch Tiffen 85NDs picked up at a market 25 years ago. I nearly sold them last year until the chap realised they weren't 6.6 inch. What would they have fitted and how long have they been obsolete?

[Chris Keth]

I used one of the grad fogs to sell an effect of a smokey gas filling a room where we only had a little fog machine. We set up the fog machine so it would pour out of a vent and then just used the grad filter to slowly pump up the overall fog level. It worked pretty well.