I absolutely love this filter! I was looking for something to soften up my pictures without breaking the bank and I came across this filter (43mm) for around 17 dollars after tax. It is super small and discrete to the point that I forget that it is on my lens half of the time.

I decided to get the 1/8 black diffusion filter rather than the 1/4, 1/2 or the 1/1 because I was looking for just a subtle glow and this thing definitely delivers. For me it is perfect, but for others the 1/8 may be TOO subtle in regular conditions. I will say however that the bloom effect really shows through when a scene has a lot of direct light or very bright highlights. I also chose the 1/8 version because I wanted a slight artistic flare to my photos without feeling too intentional with the bloom. I will also mention that I don't have the ability to determine the filter's sharpness and while I suspect that it maybe lowers the sharpness of the overall picture by a tiny minuscule bit, for many of the pictures that I took I was more than happy with the quality that it produced. If you are concerned about the sharpness I would probably look into the Tiffen filters, but even with that, those filters are 6x the price of this one.

If you are a starting out experimenting with filters and do not want to spend too much money, this is the one. There is so much fun and artistic capability that can be achieved with this filter that I keep it on my 23mm all of the time. Buy this filter!

I included two pictures of a cyclops action figure and you can really see the effect on the flash light at the bottom left of the picture as well as the overall bloom on the figure itself. I also included a few other shots with very bright highlights.