Filter ready for the new Nikkor Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S lens

Get filter ready for the new Nikkor Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens

I’ve been a landscape photographer for over twenty years now, both as a professional and enthusiast. Filters have always been essential in landscape photography. Not everyone uses graduated filters anymore, but the effect of polarising and neutral density filters can’t easily be replicated in imaging software. Every landscape photographer needs at least a polariser and a three or six stop neutral density filter in their bag.

I’ve been using the Kase magnetic circular filters for a while now. Every now and then a product comes along that’s so simple, but works so perfectly, you wonder why no-one thought of it before. The Kase magnetic filter system is one of those products. Smaller, lighter and quicker than any threaded system, in my opinion there is no better filter system on the market today.

Kase continues to innovate and expand its product range, responding to demanding ultra wide-angle lenses like Nikon’s Z 4/14-30 S with a range of larger 95mm diameter magnetic filters. Now they have done the same for Nikon’s new Z 2.8/14-24 S lens. I’ve been shooting with this lens for a few weeks now and the optical quality is spectacular. The new Z-mount lens lacks the bulbous front element of its F-mount predecessor, so it can take standard threaded filters. This is a huge advantage for landscape photographers.

There’s a catch though. The ‘standard’ filter size of the new lens is a whopping 112mm. Nikon’s solution to this problem is actually very elegant. They provide a dedicated lens hood that incorporates a 112mm filter thread. This actually works very well for a single filter like a polariser. Simply leave the filter attached to the hood and the whole assembly clips on and off the lens in a matter of seconds. The filter hood will fit most pouches designed to hold 100mm square system filters.

But there’s still a problem if you’re a landscape photographer, because we need to be able to use polarising and neutral density filters, sometimes in combination. Actually, there are two problems. The first is Nikon’s own 112mm polariser, which is too deep to stack another filter on top without vignetting at 14mm. We’re limited to one filter at a time.

However, you may not even get that far, because removing the filter from the hood is the devil’s own job. The filter thread is set inside the hood and getting your fingers in to unscrew the filter is the very definition of fiddly. It will all work fine in the calm of your living room. But try doing this on the top of an exposed hillside, working quickly in changing light, and it’s a very different story. Try it with gloves on and you can forget it. No can do.

Enter Kase with a typically simple but brilliant solution. Their new 112mm filters are supplied with a threaded magnetic adaptor ring that screws onto the Nikon filter hood. Once in place, the adaptor ring stays put. Now the filter hood works just like any other Kase magnetic adaptor. Filters just lift on and off and are held in place by magnetism. Nothing to unscrew. No fiddling. It even works with gloves on.

There’s more good news. Kase’s 112mm polariser, having no need of a rotating bezel, is only half as deep as Nikon’s. This means you can stack a polariser and ND filter without vignetting, even at 14mm. Not only this, but you can buy two of Kase’s 112mm filters for less than the price of Nikon’s 112mm polariser alone. And, like all of Kase’s filters, the quality is exceptional.


When he is not doing a proper job, Simon Miles is a landscape photographer based on Dartmoor in South West England.
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