a magnetic neutral density filter in this video we are going to discover if
this filter system is any good welcome to my channel here we talk about
welcome to my channel, here we talk about photography and I make videos just like this one where I talk about tools to
take beautiful long exposure photography so if you are here for the first time
and you love photography like me it might be a good idea to subscribe of
of course for a video like this hi had to wear the slow your shutter speed T for
long exposure lovers you could have one of these just by clicking the link in
description store it is always important to recognize the efforts that our
sponsor does to keep alive thanks for your support
one of the perks of having a YouTube channel is that I receive a lot of free
gear which is very very cool and when I receive something that I think it could
be interesting for you guys I feel I need to make a video about it because
these kind of videos are not sponsored by the company or the brand that is
sending me the gear I thought I could call this series is this any good and
for the first episode of is this any good I'm going to review this new
magnetic quick swap system by free will and I'm going to compare it with Haider
six-top and D and leaf filter six stops Andy the little stopper as I did in the
past first of all I will review the quality I will review my first thoughts
on how the system works and how easy is to use and set the filter over the lens
I will then go out and take the same shot with the three different filters I
will come back here put everything in Lightroom and compare the results let's
see what is inside this box and how these filter system works in this little
pouch we receive little lens cloth filter cloth a lifetime warranty and a
filter guide then we do have the filter and the filter is composed of two
elements a UV filter that you will screw on your lens and the magnetic filter
that will clip over so basically you will get two filters not only because
every single filter will have its own lens cap which is also magnetic so far
so good all the filters are made of a multi coated the optical glass which is
a scratch proof waterproof dustproof an oil proof I told you free will didn't
sponsor this video but they did something very very cool for me which is
they wrote my name on every single filter my name is engraved right here at
the bottom I think this is really cool I never had a personalized neutral density
filter the six tops and the filter that I received the has a 16 millimeters
filter thread so I will not be able to use it on my 20 millimeter lens because
this is a 77 millimeter thread but I can use instead on my 70 to 200 millimeter
lens which also has 67 millimeter thread so I will just
screw the UV filter and the Magnetic ND filter together and then I just detach
the ND filter so the UV filter part can stay attached to your lens at all time
this so before I can use this filter also on my 50 millimeter lens which has
a 58 millimeter thread so in this case I will need to use a step-up ring this
will bring the 58 millimeter to a 67 at this point again I will last run the UV
filter ND ND and then I can just detach the end apart now I will just need to
take a photo with the three different filters come back bring in the images in
Lightroom and compare
it is not the same day from the studio I'm not in California I am in Idol and
from here I will take my three shots starting with the new filter the free
will magnetic six stops I will screw the UV filter and then I can snap out the ND
part at f/8 I have 1 over 20 the water is a barely moving I will snap on my
magnetic and the filter and my shutter speed right now is 2.5 seconds 2.5 f8
iso 64 which shot cool so let me unscrew the free wall and
quickly change system we will go with the leaf filter right now I will need to
use a lens adapter of a 67 here we go I grab the lens adapter and
of course I will grab the leaf filter little stopper six stops we'll put it on
f8 ISO 64 2.5 seconds here we go change system again go with the hider
now of course I will need to change lens adapter and use a Haida lens adapter the
67 haidle instructor which I am right here I'm trying to be quick
because I don't want the light conditions to change here we go I will
grab my hide a filter holder and of course the six stops it's the tenth six
stops here we go put it in clearly I would be using the same settings cool so
let's see the three results this is the first one taken with the free will
second shot taking with Li filter third shot taken with the hider but of course
to understand a little better the results that we got from these three
shots I will take these three images to light I am back from idle I am back in
my studio and I'm also back in my is low your shutter speed T I did import the
three images in Lightroom let's have a look first of all have a look at this
side-by-side comparison these are the three RAW files as you can see on the
Left we have the freewill on the right we have the Haida and right in the
middle we have the leaf filter image you can clearly see that the high the filter
image is the brightest while the leaf filters is possibly the darkest of the
tree the free will stands right in the middle this difference will be even more
evident if we look at the histogram of the three shots and that's what we are
going to do right now and here we are in Lightroom have a look at
histogram of the 1st image the image taken with a free-will filter you can
see that although we are not clipping there is a spike on the brighter side of
the image and if we move now to the leaf filter shot you can see that that spike
on the histogram is not there anymore but the entire history or the mass of
the histogram is moved to the left so towards the darker part of the imager
right here and now we are on the 3rd shot this is the shot taken with the
hyda you can see that this the bright spike is even more pronounced and the
histogram altogether moved towards the brighter side a little more compared to
the leaf filter image so comparing these 3 different filters it's interesting to
notice how the intensity of the density of the 3 filters is different the second
factor that I like to pay attention at is if there is any color cast so let's
go back to the side-by-side comparison and here it is very easy to notice that
the image in the middle has a slightly blue color cast we did notice these even
more when I compared the 10 stops from Lees filters to the 10 stops from HIDA I
think that in the 6 stops the blue color cast of the leaf filter is a less
dominant less important but I can see that is still there and now the last
part of this result comparison is a side-by-side comparison of the final
edited image I made the same exact adjustments to the tree image the same
exact color correction with one difference one difference only related
to the image in the middle the leaf filters I had to change the color
temperature the white balance of the image in order to make it look
like the other two as a matter of fact let's go into litem and see how much of
a change in color temperature higher to apply in order to have comparable images
so here in Lightroom you will see on this first image the one taken with the
free wall I already applied different adjustments in the basic panel but I
left the white-balance as shot interesting difference is that the color
temperature is a 6100 the end the tint is +4 remember these numbers if I apply
auto white balance I will go to seven thousand three
hundred and +6 let's go to the leaf filter system image same adjustments I
didn't touch the white balance yet have a look the starting point here is eight
thousand five hundred and plus fifteen if I apply an auto white balance I will
go a 7500 and plus seventeen but as you can notice this image at this core
temperature is far more blue than the previous shot so I had to move the
temperature manually to ten thousand five hundred and I decrease the tint a
little bit in order to have an image that now is comparable in terms of color
temperature in terms of white balance to the previous shot let's go and have a
look to the third shot the one taken with the Haida you can see that the
untouched white balance gives me a temperature of 5050 and a tint of minus
four if I go into Auto I will go to 7200 and the tint moved to zero I will
increase the tint a little bit and this is my final shot so looking at the
side-by-side comparison of the three shots I would say that the shot taken
with the free wealth filter stands right in between
the leafeaters and the hider both in terms of color cast and in neutral
density intensity I didn't notice any difference in sharpness between the
three filters so I think the freewill is using actually a good glass to make
their filters but when it comes to prices there is a difference the free
will filter cost $99 the live filters cost 129 and the hyda filter that I used
cost 152 dollars of course in order to be able to use the new filters and the
high that you will need also lens adapter and a filter holder while the
free will can be just applied to your lens you could buy a 77 or an 82 filter
and then with some step-up rings for your lenses you could adjust the same
filter to the different lenses that you have so to answer my question is this
filter any good my answer is yes I think it's good am I going to switch to free
will I don't think so and the main reason is that I love to use a graduated
initial density filter as a matter of fact even in this shot I used liked to
be able to add a GND and darken the sky a little bit of course we can do this in
post but most of times I prefer to do as much as possible on the field while I'm
shooting this filter could be a very good option for someone that wants to
start along this positive photography and they don't want to invest too much
or they want to keep their gear at the minimum so they don't want to deal with
the lens adapter and filter holders I hope that you enjoyed this video and I
hope if you didn't start yet that you will get a try to long exposure
photography with $99 you can get a six tops or a ten stops neutral density
filter and you're ready go thanks for watching and I will see
you in the next video