iOS 8 Transparent View with non-transparent subviews

I want to place non transparent content on top of a UIImageView. So I have a view with a transparent background which contains all the content. And I've placed it on top of imageview. I've set this view's background color to clearColor but still I can not get the desired effect.

This was clearly possible with iOS 6 SDK , but now I'm trying with iOS 8 SDK which does not give me what I want.

Check this app's screenshot

I'm trying to achieve similar effect (a semi transparent view) with iOS 8 SDK. However I need to set opacity very low value which makes the view almost transparent. All I could achieve was very little transparency (something like alpha 0.9 even I set 0 ).