hi hey what's going on everybody welcome back to another video and today we're going to be
apparently talking about the world's first magnetic variable nd filter
so a while back freewell and i worked together on their new nd filter for the dji fpv drone shortly
after that video came out they reached back out it was like hey you know this summer we're coming out
with this new uh variable nd filter system do you want to take a peek at it and help us launch it of
course i agreed i do want to say this video is not sponsored or you know there was no money exchanged
or anything they just sent this out to me early and that way i can share my opinions on launch day
for you all so first let's talk about what comes in the box installation instructions you don't
need that because you're watching this video so it comes in this very nice case it's like a semi hard
case see some flex in it if you drop it you throw it around you're gonna be totally fine but if you
ran it over with your car probably not so much and then when you open it up you can see the filter
system itself and technically it does come with a bunch of different slots so if you have a bunch of
filters you have let's see one two three four five five different slots to uh put different filters
in so let's talk about this filter system and what makes it different basically this entire system is
magnetic as the name suggests so the first piece is actually just the cap semi-transparent just
logo this was your variable in d on your lens you just slap that and the magnets are really strong
that's not shaking off at all the first thing you need to look at is the base and that is the one
with the red line all the way around in here you have what's called the vnd base you know this may
be a little easier attaching it to a lens and so for today's video we're going to be using
my pocket 6k setup since my pocket 6k pro has built-in internal nds now at the time of this
recording they only had a couple different filter sizes to send out to us reviewers so i got the
82 millimeter and this is a 86 millimeter lens so i do have a step up ring which freewell is
going to be selling as well so you can check out all the filter sizes and step up step down rings
in the description down below so i'm going to take the base and just going to attach it all
right so now that we have the base on you can tell that there's actually a piece of glass showing up
here and this is actually a one stop nd in here there's a little groove that i can put my finger
that you can take out if you don't want this one stop we're gonna talk more about that in a minute
but now we just literally have the magnetic kind of base in there just line it with the
little logo groove thing and it slaps back in there magnetically and then you have a two to
five stop and a six to nine stop variable nd now the new trend that i really like about this
is these are hard stops so i've had variable nd's i've used in the past that are just full
endless rotation and you get crazy crazy color shift with that and you never really know what
stop you're at which is really frustrating so the fact that this is a hard stop is really nice
and to install it of course it's magnetic but what you want to do is line up
there's a capital a here and a capital a on the base and that's going to line it up perfectly
you're going to see that sits perfectly and now we can see the numbered grooves here that i can
slide and go two stop three stop four stop five stop and we have that hard stop in there which is
really nice if i wanted to change to the six to nine stop i don't have to unscrew anything
i just literally take it off and put this one on it magnetically and again the magnets
super strong now some possible cons or at least things to know about is once you have filters on
it they do not have threaded fronts so you cannot add other different types of filters or map boxes
in front of it they did this so that you don't have any vignetting issues as well as the base
itself does not have any threads as well but there's another trick up these nd filter sleeve
if you notice on one of the size it says two to five or six to nine stops but if i flip it over
it actually says cpl and on the six to nine it actually says nd 32 cpl so not only do you get
a variable nd filter but you get a awesome cpl now to do this you need to take out the one stop base
and then you pick whichever cpl one you want so maybe we're in more low light so i don't need nd
so i'm going to flip it over so that cpl is facing out and i'm going to attach this and now instead
of hard stops you have a full 360 rotation so that way you can use it like a normal cpl filter uh
and you know do away with reflections and things like that and again if you want vnd back
you simply just flip it over align the capital a's and you're back at your two to five stops now
hold up just like a good infomercial commercial there's more so they included one more thing in
uh the system here and it's back in this case now this is a missed base now i'm a fan of uh you know
the pro-mist look as uh people call it and so we can see here at the bottom it says missed vnd base
and so now what you do is replace the one-stop uh nd base with this uh missed one so now we have
the mistbase of course if you're in a low light environment you can just straight up use this and
get that nice halation uh and glow or of course you can add your nds on top but this won't be a
proper filmmaking gear video if i basically just sounded like an infomercial the whole time right
so it's time to go outside and do some tests we want to look for any vignetting issues any major
color shifts now at the time of this recording i don't have the price of this but if you're
seeing this video it's now live so you can check it out in the link in the description but i have
a feeling it's not going to be the most expensive nds on the market and anytime you have variable nd
you have multiple pieces of glass shifting there is definitely going to be some color
shift is my guess but we'll see how bad let's go out and run some real world scenario tests
this is no nd filter at all we put in the vnd base cicadas everywhere
so this is what the base looks like and i'm gonna add the two to five stop
where my eyes are squinting i cannot look in the daylight all right so that's all
the way up five stops it's looking good on the monitor it's cicada warfare right here
this is six stops
there's nine stops
obviously that's too dark but on the monitor i'm not seeing any noticeable tint i will have to see
again here's nine stops six is looking really nice the light keeps changing so
let's take off everything so that's six and this is just the camera by itself
it's compensated for aperture so this is that t22 all right i'm done with outside done with
these cicadas let's go back inside i'm done all right and here's a couple simple examples of the
cpl filters it's always handy to have a good cpl filter on hand just to get glares and reflections
out of glass and frames and whatever else and so these worked really well nothing groundbreaking
here just some really solid cpl filters and finally i tested out the mist filters and
you'll see me talking here but the audio was trash because it was just the scratch audio from the
camera basically i just used the vnd base mist so i didn't add on any of the variable nd's or cpls
or anything so just the base itself and i actually compared it to my dream effects filter which is in
this little map box now both are decently strong i would say in terms of pro-miss since that's
what everyone compares to they're probably the equivalent strength to like a one-half
pro-miss filter so it's pretty strong pretty stylized but i like the look in certain scenarios
i think it looks good and since the bass is so close to the lens when i held up a light directly
to it you didn't get any reflections from the lens or the map box itself which is an issue i run into
constantly if i'm shooting into the light source with this there's so much space between the front
of the filter and the start of the lens back here that light kind of goes into the matte
box scatters around and you can actually see the circular outline of the front of the lens
and it's ruined so many shots so i really like the fact that i can use this mist filter and
not have it uh you know show the lens front when shooting into the light source or anything so for
me that is a huge plus all in all i think this is a really solid system i'm curious to know
what you guys think it definitely felt like uh it was adding a little bit of magenta but it honestly
seemed even more natural or at least more pleasing than the stock footage straight out of camera when
i went up to nine obviously that's when it was its strongest but on a bright sunny day that six stops
looks really nice with my 15 millimeter wide open at 2 8. but i'm curious what do you guys
think about these filters let me know down in the comments below again if you're interested
in learning more about this stuff the links will be in the description thanks to freewell
for sending it out my way early on and thank you guys for watching i'll see you in the next video