For years, camera manufacturers have said that you’ll ruin image quality if you use UV filters or anything else on your lenses. But man, has that aged terribly. For nearly a decade, I’ve stated that modern camera lenses are like tech bros who all wear the same clothing in the same room without coordinating with one another. That’s a long way to say that they’re all the same, and it’s all sterile. So photographers have been adding mist filters, glimmerglass, and so many others to get character back in their image quality. Best of all, it means you don’t need to buy a new camera. But there’s a lens filter that the manufacturers are sure to hate.
The folks over at Kolari Vision make magnetic clip-in filters. These filters literally clip into the area right in front of the camera sensor. They come in different variations like mist, diffusion, infrared, and iridium amongst others. But after you clean your camera sensor, you can ensure that it stays clean with these little filters.
They’re really simple to use, too. With your camera turned off, clean the sensor using a rocket blower or any other method that you use. Then carefully place the filter over the sensor area. It will magnetically clip in over the sensor and even up not even touching it. Better yet, all of your autofocus lenses will work pretty much the same as they did before.
This is great if your camera doesn’t have a sensor shield of some sort. So that means it’s great for lots of Nikon cameras, Leica cameras, Fujifilm, and almost any older camera model around. It will also mean that your sensor stays cleaner.
Camera manufacturers tend to not want you to use filters over the camera sensor because they state that the image quality degrades. However, that’s not really the case. Lots of professionals use UV and protective lens filters all the time on their cameras and lenses. The image quality isn’t really affected all that much unless you’re majorly pixel peeping. At that point, it doesn’t matter and you’re probably going to do post-production anyway.
I’ve put these on my older Sony camera bodies. I still own the Sony a7r III and haven’t upgraded because it’s seriously still one of the best cameras that they’ve ever made. But I hate the fact that the sensor gets dirty sometimes. This lens fitler prevents that from happening and it gives a bit of diffusion to Sony’s otherwise bland image quality. I plan on doing the same thing for my Nikon Zf — in fact, I ordered a UV filter for it within the past hour that I’m writing this article.
If you really want to save some money and also time in the future, consider a clip-in filter. Mine are from Kolari; and I’ll probably end up buying more.
I just wish they made these clip in filters for Leica M mount. Then I’d be all set.
