82 mm Rainbow Rotatable Streak Filter with Anamorphic Effect

Hold a CD at an angle to the light and see what happens: A white dot turns into a colored band. That’s exactly what this filter does with the light sources in your photo. Where a white spotlight would normally be, a strip runs across the shot, breaking the light down into its constituent colors. The effect is created during shooting, using the light that was actually there.

• Breaks down bright light sources into a colored stripe
• Prism effect that changes depending on the brightness of the light source
• Rotatable mount; direction of the stripe can be freely adjusted
• 82mm thread on front and back; cap and filter still fit
• Can also be used on lenses with smaller threads using a step-up ring
• Comes in a protective carrying case

A prism in front of the lens

The colors come from the light itself

The filter refracts the passing light and fans it out along the strip. White and cool light sources show this most clearly because they contain all colors. With a warm incandescent bulb, the fan is narrower and more golden. The effect therefore reacts to the light in the scene, rather than always looking the same.

The rotating mount determines the direction

The glass sits in its own mount, which can be rotated further after being screwed in place. This allows you to determine whether the strip runs horizontally, vertically, or diagonally across the image. Without this mount, the direction is determined by the thread stop, which is located in a different place on every lens.

82mm in, 82mm out

There’s another 82mm thread on the front. Lens caps and other filters fit just as before, and you can insert the filter into an existing stack. You can connect lenses with smaller threads using a step-up ring. The ring requires a thread; magnetic adapter rings cannot accommodate a screw-in filter.

Here’s what it looks like in everyday use

Neon and Storefronts at Night

Cold neon signs, LED letters, spotlights in the rain: many harsh light sources against a dark background—and that’s exactly what the filter uses to create its color bands. With a white light source, you’ll see the full spectrum; this is the filter’s most striking application.

Backlit portrait

With a light source right next to the head, the colored streak runs across the image instead of across the face as soon as you rotate the filter frame appropriately. You control the intensity of the effect by adjusting the light source’s position within the frame: slightly off-center is usually enough; placing it right in the center quickly makes it too strong.

What You Should Know Before You Order

This is the most striking of the three streak effects

A colored streak immediately catches the viewer’s eye, and in the twentieth shot of a series, it can quickly start to look like a gimmick. It’s effective for individual shots and music videos, but not for an entire wedding photo essay. Use it selectively rather than throughout the entire shoot, so the effect remains impactful.

The colors remain in the image

What the filter splits apart, you won’t be able to put back together during editing. This is true for video anyway; for photos, it’s worth taking an additional shot without the filter. A colored stripe across the face can’t be corrected later.

Nothing happens without a hard light source

The effect requires bright, point-like highlights in the image. Under overcast skies or with uniform studio lighting, you’ll hardly see anything except a slight reduction in contrast. And like the other two versions, this filter is a Chinese-made, unbranded product: there are no data sheets regarding coating, glass type, or plane-parallelism, and we cannot guarantee that a subsequent batch will be exactly the same. If you need documented specifications, choose a brand-name filter—for example, the Black Mist Filter for soft focus, or the Soft-Star Filter.

Technical Details at a Glance

• Mount: 82mm filter thread
• Front thread: 82mm, for lens caps or additional filters
• Effect: Light streaks from point light sources, anamorphic look
• Streak color: multicolored, split into spectral colors
• Mount: rotatable, streak direction freely adjustable
• Available only in 82mm; smaller lenses require a step-up ring

Package Contents

• 1 x Streak Filter Rainbow 82mm
• 1 x Protective and carrying case