It seems like everybody’s going magnetised these days. We’re constantly seeing magnets in use with our photography and video tools, whether it’s magnetic mounts on gimbals, filter systems, light modifiers, or whatever. Well, here’s another magnetic filter system from Freewell. It’s called K2, and it’s currently launching on Indiegogo.
While Freewell is not a new company, they’re typically better known for producing small filters for drones. They cover pretty much the entire range of DJI prosumer drones, as well as a number of drones from Autel and Skydio. They also produce small filters for action cameras such as the Insta360 RS and GoPro Hero series. But they have made a few larger filters for a while now.
How the Freewell K2 system works
The K2 system offers a complete range of filters, including 1-5 stop VND, 6-9 stop VND, CPL, ND32/PL, GND, ND, Glow Mist, Snow Mist and Streak. These cover almost every filter situation you might find yourself in with your camera. As with most filter systems, you begin by screwing on your filter thread adapter, and K2 covers all sizes from 67-82mm. If you’re using smaller than 67mm, you can always use step-up rings.
After this, you add the main base ring and then start stacking on your magnetic filters. The base also has a slot, allowing you to use square filters such as the graduated neutral density and streak filters, with the ability to rotate them to get things lined up exactly the way you need them to, given the scene before you.
Freewell has posted a video on how the system works, from picking the correct base ring and adding the base to installing square, graduated neutral density, polariser and variable neutral density filters. And it does offer certain advantages, specifically for the graduated ND filters.
Futureproof?
The company says that K2 is “future-proof”. In this context, it sounds as though they mean you can keep using the filter as you upgrade lenses to wider apertures with larger filter requirements in the future. Your gear upgrade future. It doesn’t mean that it’ll last or be valid forever and that it’ll continue to be added to. And as with all of these new magnetic filter systems, it’s still essentially a proprietary system. So, “future-proof” also doesn’t mean it accounts for future 3rd party filters being released (that don’t fit in K2) that Freewell won’t necessarily make themselves.
K2 has been in development since September 2021, according to the campaign currently running on Indiegogo. Mass production is set to begin in May, after the campaign ends with shipping beginning in June. So, we’ll see how quickly they deliver. If they can deliver that quickly, I suspect the production run is actually already happening and Indiegogo is just being used as a marketing platform. If they are able to commence a full production run and start shipping them out within a month, I’ll be very impressed.
Where to get one
The Freewell K2 is available in three packages on Indiegogo. Starter, Creative Capture and Landscape, with pledges currently set at $349, $399 and $449 respectively. These are 30% off the expected retail cost once the campaign ends. If you want to find out more or back the campaign for yourself, head to Indiegogo.
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