For panorama photographers, twilight presents a few of the finest lighting to wash your scenes in, from the wealthy golden hour tones round dawn and sundown or the extra muted pastel colours you see when the solar dips beneath the horizon.
Kenko‘s MC Twilight Blue and Purple filters declare that will help you “take inspiring pictures of the sky throughout twilight” and are shade filters designed particularly for daybreak and nightfall images.
Whereas each filters have been designed to work round twilight, the Purple filter is finest for enhancing the naturally heat colours round dawn and sundown when the solar is above the horizon, whereas the Blue iteration is healthier for the cooler tones present in blue hour when the solar has set.
It is also value noting that each Purple and Blue filters suppress the inexperienced mild air pollution that comes from mercury and fluorescent lights so that they’re ideally suited for early morning or late night cityscapes too.
Samuel Throneley, from Kenko Tokina Co Ltd, World Gross sales Division says the filters produce a “extra genuine illustration of shade that’s tough to breed in software program”.
We obtained maintain of the 82mm variations for each MC Purple and MC Blue, then headed to the coast to shoot within the magical golden and blue hours at sundown to offer them a radical take a look at and discover out in the event that they deserve your hard-earned money.
Specs
| Filter sort | Shade enhancement |
| Mount | Screw-in |
| Thread diameter vary (mm) | 49, 52, 55, 58, 62, 67, 72, 77, 82 |
| Filter materials | Optical shade glass |
| Body materials | Aluminium |
| Thickness | 6 mm |
Construct & Dealing with
Kenko’s MC Twilight Blue and Purple filters are each manufactured in Japan, denoting prime quality and a premium construct. The pair of filters each aimed toward dawn and sundown shooters come accessible in a broad vary of sizes to suit lenses with filter threads starting from 49mm all the way in which as much as 82mm and all of the frequent sizes in between.
The filters additionally come effectively packaged in a tough plastic UV reduce case for storage, with Kenko suggesting you retain the filters within the case out of direct daylight and away from excessive temperatures when not in use. Presumably, that is to stop solar bleaching from prolonged direct daylight publicity.
The filters each have a depth of 6mm, although solely protrude by 4mm when hooked up to your lens as its male thread measures 2mm.
Each the MC Twilight Blue and Purple filters can be stacked collectively for distinctive purple tones that work effectively in both the golden or blue hours round dawn and sundown.
In case you had been questioning what the ‘MC’ stands for within the product identify, it is Multi-Coat. It employs a number of AR (anti-reflection) coatings to stop optical flares and random reflections when taking pictures in direction of the solar which is how the filters are designed for use for dawn and sundown images. Sadly, they do not characteristic a water resistant coating however this should not be an excessive amount of of a difficulty as you will prone to be taking pictures in clear, sunny situations at daybreak or nightfall.
Efficiency
Each filters halve the lightflow into the digital camera, in different phrases, they scale back the sunshine by about one full f/-stop. This may considerably work to your benefit when taking pictures at twilight the place you may need to underexpose your photographs to create placing silhouettes in your panorama scenes or prolong the shutter pace to seize movement in waves or clouds.
Even when the intense solar had set beneath the horizon it was nonetheless fairly difficult to steadiness the publicity between vivid sky and deep darkish foreground, particularly because the filter halves the lightflow. We discovered it generally labored finest to zoom in on faraway topics to keep away from together with any foreground altogether.
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We did not see any indicators of vignetteing with both of the filters even on the widest finish of our 16-35mm lens. Although it did change into a difficulty when stacking the Blue and Purple filters collectively – however may very well be remedied with software program or zooming into round 20mm to crop out essentially the most offending darkish areas.
This additionally makes it trickier to make use of the filters along side different filter favorites for landscapes, like a round polarizer (CPL), impartial density (ND), or graduated impartial density (GND) filters. Once more we needed to zoom in to round 20mm to cease our LEE filter holder showing within the body when it was hooked up to one of many Twilight filters.
The twilight filters every halves the sunshine coming into the lens so maybe the necessity for a impartial density filter can be considerably negated anyway.
You may also stack each the Twilight Purple and Blue collectively to create purple tones, although vignetting is an issue when stacking at ultra-wide focal lengths like 16mm on a full-frame physique. As every of the filters reduces the stream of sunshine by a full cease, stacking them collectively will go away you with simply one-quarter of the pure mild coming into the digital camera, so you will want a slower shutter pace, wider aperture, or larger ISO to compensate, or use the diminished lightflow to create placing silhouettes. This additionally means a tripod is a brilliant concept when utilizing them.
You probably have Auto White Stability enabled in your digital camera it should attempt to appropriate for the blue and pink shade solid, so that you must keep in mind to set your digital camera to a customized WB setting after which additionally fine-tune the colours when modifying the RAW information again in modifying software program similar to Adobe Photoshop CC or Lightroom Traditional CC to get the colours wanting good.
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In these take a look at photographs you possibly can see the vivid impact that the filters have in your photographs, each in affecting the colors and the way they halve the lightflow creating darker photographs in case your settings are left unchanged. This may nevertheless be useful if you happen to want to create a stark silhouette in your dawn or sundown scenes.
In these take a look at photographs you possibly can see the vivid impact that the filters have in your photographs, each in affecting the colors and the way they halve the lightflow creating darker photographs in case your settings are left unchanged. This may nevertheless be useful if you happen to want to create a stark silhouette in your dawn or sundown scenes.
In these take a look at photographs you possibly can see the vivid impact that the filters have in your photographs, each in affecting the colors and the way they halve the lightflow creating darker photographs in case your settings are left unchanged. This may nevertheless be useful if you happen to want to create a stark silhouette in your dawn or sundown scenes.
In these take a look at photographs you possibly can see the vivid impact that the filters have in your photographs, each in affecting the colors and the way they halve the lightflow creating darker photographs in case your settings are left unchanged. This may nevertheless be useful if you happen to want to create a stark silhouette in your dawn or sundown scenes.
Verdict
We had been capable of finding all of Kenko’s MC Blue and Purple Twilight filters in inventory on Amazon for all the filter thread sizes from the smallest 49mm, as much as the biggest 82mm.
Costs for each begin at $33 / £27 and steadily enhance as much as $80 / £70 for the biggest possibility. We’d at all times counsel shopping for the filter dimension that matches your largest lens so as to use low cost step-up rings to make the filters appropriate with lenses that use a smaller entrance filter thread as that is extra economical than buying a set of filters for each lens.
For the 58mm on the time of evaluate, it isn’t low cost but it surely’s additionally under no circumstances the most costly filter on this planet – these smaller sizes are prone to work effectively with equipment lenses similar to Canon‘s EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM. The value level additionally makes it a super present that will not break the financial institution.
For extra skilled lenses, together with ultra-wide angles, and zooms just like the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM we used for our testing, you are going to should spend extra to cowl their bigger filter thread attachments.
As you are going out to take footage at dawn and sundown anyway it most likely is sensible to top off on each the MC Twilight Purple and Blue variations so you possibly can take advantage of each the golden hour and the blue hour that precedes or follows it (relying on whether or not you exit within the morning or night). This additionally then permits you to stack the 2 collectively for distinctive purple tones so that you get the complete potential from the 2 filters.
For professionals with bigger wide-angle lenses you are spending about $160 / £140 for the pair, so is it value it? In case you’re actually into landscapes and love taking pictures dawn and sundown scenes, and also you additionally discover that your colours are popping out somewhat flat straight from digital camera then these can be an awesome possibility. Though a tad dear, they do have a premium Japanese construct, prime picture high quality, and a number of coatings which all assist enhance their worth.