Hoya Starscape Light-Pollution Camera Filter

**Tin Can** · 5-Apr-2023, 05:01

Anybody use this?

Bryan probably knows

I have several lenses and formats that could use it

**Willie** · 5-Apr-2023, 05:17

If someone has used photographing Northern Lights - does it block the Red light we often see above the green?

**Corran** · 6-Apr-2023, 04:07

Luckily where I live is decent w/o a light pollution filter. However I was looking at that Hoya or other similar ones for future experimentation. There's a ton of different products in this category. I can't even remember all the details but there's lots of articles online about them. I was considering the one that mounts inside the camera behind the lens mount.

**Tin Can** · 6-Apr-2023, 04:24

Thank you

Most likely I will get one to fit my NIKON P1000 AND my NIKON 200-500

Been watching the full moon this morning on big TV as I have clouds and trees

I wonder if your Vette has newer stainless brake lines...and rubber hoses

Originally Posted by Corran

Luckily where I live is decent w/o a light pollution filter. However I was looking at that Hoya or other similar ones for future experimentation. There's a ton of different products in this category. I can't even remember all the details but there's lots of articles online about them. I was considering the one that mounts inside the camera behind the lens mount.

**Corran** · 6-Apr-2023, 05:15

My mom has the P1000, 77mm filters iirc. Same on 200-500?

Not sure on the Vette but it's all original save standard maintenance stuff...

**Tin Can** · 6-Apr-2023, 05:26

Brake Lines rust from the inside out but normal OLD DOT brake fluid has changed over time

NIKON 200-500 is 95mm

I have an expensive Solar filter from last eclipse

Originally Posted by Corran

My mom has the P1000, 77mm filters iirc. Same on 200-500?

Not sure on the Vette but it's all original save standard maintenance stuff...

**konakoa** · 7-Apr-2023, 13:30

I have. TLDR; the effect of this filter is very mild. There is a minor improvement with it, but nothing at all of what's claimed cutting through the thick gray miasma of city light pollution rendering a pristine black sky.

These filters are made from a interesting type of glass called didymium. It's worn in protective goggles by the workers (or was) in glass blowing shops to protect the eyesight from the intense searing orange glow of molten glass. The color of the filter does a very good job of toning down orange without much of an effect on other colors—and the spectrum of orange it blocks also coincides with sodium streetlights that makes up a large portion of astronomical light pollution.

These exact same filters were a fad for a little while in landscape photography too. Anyone remember the "red-enhancing" filters? They blocked orange and made reds more intense. Astronomy folks clued in to them and were used as light pollution filters back then. Now they're just outright sold as light pollution filters. The old Hoya 'intensifier' for landscapes is identical to the light pollution filter they sell now, all that's been done is a name change.

I've used these filters with 4x5 Kodak Tech Pan that I hypersensitize before exposure in hydrogen gas. (Still using and working with the film now.) I've used the filter with the old original Fuji 4x5 Acros too. Again, the effect of the filter is mild. With the Acros I don't recall much of a improvement of filtered versus unfiltered exposures at all. Light pollution is more than just orange street lights. There's still some blue-green mercury lights, then the blinding bluish-white LED floodlights everyone wants blasting away into the sky all night...there just ain't effective filters for that mess.