Manfrotto is a photographic power house and although best known for its extensive tripod range, it also produces a huge range of photographic accessories. And now the company has added XUME Adapters to the line-up.
The XUME adapters are in principle incredibly simple: just two screw on adapter rings, one that fits onto the front of your lens and then the other that screws onto the back of the filter where you would usually attach it to the lens.
Once in place a magnet inside the two adapters connects and holds the two together. This means with multiple adapters fitted to your filters and one fitted to your lens (or lenses) you can quickly switch between filters without the hassle of unscrewing.
The adapters are designed to make life easier, speeding up swapping between different filters on one lens or using one filter on different lenses. Of course you’d need to have the same sized filter thread across your lenses or use a step-up ring to make all lenses have a consistent filter thread size.
Where this system is really going to excel is for those using DSLRs for video. If you want to get the shallow depth of field effect you normally have to use an ND filter in order to open up the aperture.
However, on many shoots you often find that you need to swap between 2 or 3 different density filters because of fluctuations of light and exposure. The standard solution is a variable ND filter, easy to use but you’ll pay a price premium for a good one.
Now with the XUME Adapters you can quickly swap between the filters for the fraction of the cost.
The design is certainly innovative and it will be interesting to see if the slight change in distance away from the front element of the lens will visibly increase the vignetting, especially with wider aperture lenses.
The Manfrotto XUME Lens adapters are available in 8 sizes: 49mm, 52mm, 58mm, 62mm; 67mm, 72mm, 77mm, 82mm.
For more information check out the Manfrotto website
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