Magnetic ND1000 neutral density filter

The K&F quick release filter system

Keith has looked at several neutral density filters in different styles.

They all let you use longer exposures or wider apertures by stopping some light getting into the camera during your shot.

This one has a novel magnetic attachment method for it and the included lens cap

There is a short video below looking at the filter

Keith has been trying the K&F magnetic filter: https://bit.ly/3BImso8

Coupon code: KF10UK ( 10% discount,Valid until 31/12/2021 ）

The Magnetic ND1000 Nano-X neutral density filter

The ND1000 looks solid black, because it lets very little light through. In fact you need to adjust your exposure by 10 stops.

Now, I’ve more examples of the filter in use in my other ND1000 filter articles, this short review is mainly about the way it attaches to the camera lens

• ND1000 – screw fit filter
• ND1000 – square 100mm with holder

The filter comes with an adapter ring (screws on to lens), the very thin filter ring (magnetic) and the lens cap (magnetic)

I’ve this short video looking at using the filter

Exposure with the filter

Only about 1/1000 of the light is getting through the filter

The 10 stop difference means that if I needed a 1/1000s exposure for a shot, the filter would lengthen this to 1 second.

This gives a clue to the typical uses of such filters – long exposures.

ND filter ratings are described in a number of ways – this table shows the gradations up to our ND1000 example

Note that you need better than ND5000 to photograph the sun with liveview. Nearer to ND100,000 for safely looking at it. You also need to be sure that the filter is not letting damaging levels of UV or IR through. The gist of this is that if you want to look at the sun, get a specialised solar filter.

About the filter

The filter was from K&F Concept who have a range of magnetic filters in different sizes

All three sections are magnetic The filter sticks to the ring, the cap to the ring or the filter. They all attracted a small screwdriver, and if you reverse them, they repel. The lens cap also has a thread (82mm in this case)

With such a filter, you just can’t see through a DSLR viewfinder any more, so it’s composing with the rear screen. Obviously, this is less of a problem with mirrorless cameras.

If using a DSLR you should be aware that light coming in through the viewfinder will completely throw your camera metering – for me this is something to use with manual setting only.

The filter adds very little colour cast to images, but you might want to take care in your image processing settings, especially white balance.  Of course you could use something like a ColorChecker Passport to be sure, if colour rendition is particularly important.

Long exposures can be fun to experiment with but…

Just beware of the new-toy effect where you start thinking everything benefits from long exposure (it happens with any new photo technique, just beware of it ;-)