Well, Mr Justgetout, I think you need to try this yourself and see! It's really fun and it works exactly as I described.
(And yes, the wider the aperture you can use, the better. I used my 50mm 1.4 for this) But because you asked
nicely, I re-shot the scene without the filter on. I also broke it down a bit more.

Ahh, well. That would explain my murky photos, now wouldn't it. Thanks for the clarification!

Although, if you enjoy abstract photography, you've got to admit the murky haze makes a neat effect. Enjoy it like you would a painting:



Or don't enjoy it, it's up to you.

Really, these are the lowest quality photos I've ever shot, but I can't help but be fascinated by them.

Well now I'm confused. What difference does white or black paper make? Opaque is opaque...

Don, I'm not sure if you noticed, but that exactly what I've done already. that's what this thread is about. Hehe.

Did you see the third shot of my lamp? The one with all the "Wee"s?

I'm sorry if this is an old concept to you guys, but tonight I just discovered the mesmerizing joys of paper filters for photography! Oh, how can I describe it? Pictures! Yes!

So if you do this,

You get this. And this. And this. These are unmodified and straight out of the camera.

Take a look at my gallery to get more of the story and see some trippy stuff!

Who here has heard of this technique already? Why haven't I seen it in my years of shooting? This is fun! It's very challenging to get any focus at all, especially with a focusing screen(Ironically), because I guess it was not meant to function with a giant opaque thing over the lens. Doing this also stops the light waaaay down(of course) and it gives a very strong tint of whatever colour paper you're using(of course). It also drastically reduces the resolution of your lens(Nothing is quite sharp except the custom-bokeh itself). It's quite a lot of work to get any good shots out of it, but it's really neat.

$60 Canadian, yeah. And it's a Tokina lens - I like their modern lenses, so I'm sure this one will be fine (only a 2.8 though, meh). And the only reason I bought the K1000 with it was because this was cheaper than buying the lens by itself, strangely enough.

(I usually don't hijack threads like this, but I don't think the OP cares too much. hehe)

I wonder what you offered. I wonder because I just bought a K1000 with a 28mm attatched to it for $60. I wonder if that was too high.

Ok, that's it. I'm here to stay. El Oh El to all of you.

I'm glad I could help?

I didn't see the OP anywhere, so I thought I was all clear to go on about any old topic. Heh. Whoops. Hi OP, Welcome back!

Yeah, I heard this wonderful analogy for Raw files a while back.

Imagine a kitchen. The data in a Raw file is the ingredients(flour, milk, etc), the recipe book is the code within the camera, and the final image is the scrumptious cake we're making. Many people are fine letting their camera bake their cake for them (Shooting Jpgs), but some people prefer to modify the recipe ever so slightly(Editting raw files) to get their cake to taste a bit different. Sure you can modify a cake after it's been baked(playing with Jpgs), but it's not going to work as well as if you had modified the base ingredients or the recipe in the first place. There are less options for modification in the final cake.

One thing to keep in mind is, the recipe to bake this cake is a secret and only the head baker(the camera maker) knows what it is. Everyone else who is making this cake (any programs that can edit your camera's raw files) had to reverse-engineer that cake and guess the ingredients and recipe until it tasted about right.

Neat, huh?