Overview of the K&F Concept variable ND filter

Today we will look at a vari­able ND fil­ter from the man­u­fac­tur­er Kent & Faith.

This brand spe­cial­izes in the pro­duc­tion of var­i­ous pho­to equip­ment and pho­to / video acces­sories, such as tripods, fil­ters, var­i­ous adapters and adapters for lens­es, pho­to back­packs and more. There is a web­site where you can view and pur­chase their prod­ucts. There is also a store on AliEx­press.

On the prod­uct page there are dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of ND fil­ters, for dif­fer­ent threads and with dif­fer­ent lev­els of dark­ness. In this case, we are talk­ing about an ND2-32 fil­ter with a diam­e­ter of 52mm.

Let’s test it on a Sig­ma 30mm 1.4 lens (Sony A6300 cam­era).

Package:

Equipment:

The fil­ter hous­ing is made of alu­minum, the assem­bly is of high qual­i­ty, there is no back­lash. Fil­ter weight — 26 grams.

The body is made of two parts, the lev­el of dark­ness is adjust­ed by rotat­ing the front. The rota­tion is smooth, mod­er­ate­ly tight. When the max­i­mum / min­i­mum val­ues ​​are reached, a stop occurs.

Due to the rib­bing of the sec­ond part, the fil­ter is con­ve­nient to twist and remove from the lens, it does not slip.

The advan­tages of this lens include the absence of a “cross” defect on wide-angle lens­es. Checked on the action cam­era SJCAM M20.

Exam­ples of pho­tos with­out a fil­ter, with min­i­mum and max­i­mum eclipse, auto­mat­ic set­tings:

ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/2300

ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/900

ISO 134, f/2.8, 1/100

The sharp­ness of the image with the fil­ter drops very slight­ly, almost imper­cep­ti­bly.

Exam­ples from a Sony cam­era (with­out fil­ter, with min­i­mum and max­i­mum eclipse):

ISO 100, f/6.7, 1/90

ISO 100, f/6.7, 1/45

ISO 100, f/6.7, 1/4

If we com­pare the expo­sure val­ue with­out a fil­ter and with its max­i­mum eclipse, there is a decrease in expo­sure by 3–3.5 stops (from +2 to ‑1/-1.5). The shut­ter speed decreas­es from 1/250 to 1/10. The aper­ture changes from 13 to 3.5.

The fil­ter allows you to shoot in bright sun­light at the widest aper­ture. For exam­ple, with­out a fil­ter at aper­ture 1.4 and ISO 100, the shut­ter speed was max­i­mum (1/4000) and there were flash­es, with a fil­ter at max­i­mum eclipse, the shut­ter speed dropped to 1/750.

Using the fil­ter, you can take pic­tures in the day­time with a long expo­sure (about 1 sec­ond at aper­ture 8 and above) and get inter­est­ing effects.

Photo examples:

You can also make light draw­ings dur­ing the day 🙂

Orig­i­nal pho­tos can be viewed/downloaded here

Results

+ pre­sentable pack­ag­ing (suit­able as a gift);
+ high-qual­i­ty assem­bly;
+ excel­lent pic­ture qual­i­ty at any fil­ter val­ue.

You can buy the filter here:
• Official store on AliExpress
• Official site of K&F