Using K&F CONCEPT Accessories To Elevate Your Photography Game | PetaPixel

In the photography world, we’re always looking for something that will help us get our work done just a little bit faster, a little bit easier, and a little bit better. It might be a lighter but sturdier tripod, a bigger and more useful backpack, or even filters to help get that tricky shot without having to spend hours in Photoshop after the fact. There’s really no shortage of increasing quality and innovation in the products available for a photographer’s kit, which is why K&F CONCEPT gear is so interesting.

Full disclosure: This sponsored article is brought to you by K&F CONCEPT.

K&F CONCEPT has over a decade of experience (Founded in 2011) and growth in the photographic accessory world including tripods, lens filters, backpacks, lens mount adapters, cleaning supplies, batteries, trail & security cameras, and more. Basically covering almost everything a photographer would need besides the actual camera. The company has even said they have plans to expand into a full range of imaging-related accessory products in an effort to deliver “comprehensive, high-quality shooting solutions for photography enthusiasts worldwide, supporting the art of capturing beautiful moments with ease and precision.” A Promise that the company seems to be delivering on as they go so far as to even include instructions on how to turn the packaging for some of their filters into photo frames.

When I first heard of K&F CONCEPT, I honestly thought it was going to be just another filter company with nothing really that exciting to offer. But after several discussions, tests and experiments, my opinion has been officially swayed and they have actually become one of my favorite brands.

Over the last two weeks I’ve taken a variety of K&F CONCEPT gear to some of the gigs I booked to see if they could help me bring something extra to the productions I was working on. This included a selection of filters (like the $33 Nano B Kaleidoscope Special Effects Filter, the $94 Nano X Super Slim Circular Polarizer Filter, the $50 Nano-X 10 Stops (ND1000) ND Filter, the $160.99 Nano-X CPL & Variable ND Lens Filter, the $63 Nano-X Blue Streak Filter, and several of the Black Mist filters, all piled into the $120 32L Pro Large Camera Backpack (which had room for all of those filters along with two full mirrorless camera kits, and multiple additional lenses), with the $179 1.7 meter carbon fiber tripod with ball head for good measure. While each project had it’s own challenges, the results were actually pretty awesome.

Like how we previously found out using the Black Mist filters can bring a more vintage and nostalgic feel to your images (without the use of photoshop), it’s not something you would use all the time. However, when you’re shooting a scene that’s meant to be a flashback or a memory, those filters can quickly save a scene when you don’t have the time, or the supplies to light and haze a room for the same effect.

Using the Black Diffusion filters I was able to capture a few images to make our scene look like a “rose-colored-glasses” memory without slowing down the production. These filters use small particles in the glass itself to catch the incoming light and spread it around, lowering the overall contrast and adding a soft glow to the highlights of your images that can even soften the sun creating that vintage-flashback feel.

A few days later I was tasked with photographing a band called The Flux Capacitors at a private party where I had a blast using the Blue Streak and Kaleidoscope filters. What exactly do these filters do? Well the Blue Streak filter basically produces a light streak from light sources that create an almost anamorphic feel to your scene and allows you to rotate the streaks to control and enhance the direction of the light flares in your shot.

In contrast to this, the Kaleidoscope filter bends and refracts light (like the Kaleidoscopes you may have played with as a child) and transforms your “normal” image into something abstract and borderline psychedelic.

The look and intensity if this effect is very much affected by the amount of zoom (the longer your focal length, the more intense the effect can get) and how busy your background is, but the general rule of thumb here is keep your main subject in the very center of the frame, and then, just have fun with some truly wild effects.

Both filters let you rotate the outer portion of the glass giving you more control to create some truly weird and crazy effects that can both be incredible, or completely not work at all depending on how far you go with it, so don’t be afraid to experiment with these as you can end up with some pretty wild and fun images.

Stepping away from the people-based creative work, it was time to test out the neutral density filters on one of the busiest places I could find in Los Angeles; The Santa Monica Pier. Weirdly enough, you’d think we’d be past the “June Gloom” that plagues the coastline, but no, most of the days I managed to get out to the area ended up being completely fogged out or even rainy so I wasn’t able to test the gear out properly except for a brief moment between jobs bright and early (emphasis on the bright) on Sunday morning.

Using the 1.7 meter Carbon Fiber Tripod with ball head and hooking my backpack up to the center column for extra weight and support I was able to test out some long exposures with practically no wobbles or jitters from wind or even me touching the tripod accidentally. Leveraging the CPL and ND filters (including the ND1000) I was able to effectively remove most of the people and traffic from the shots below (Other than the parking lots of course). While you have to pay closer attention to ensuring your sensor, lenses, and filters are clean and free of dust when you capture these long exposures (especially when shot at f/8 to f/22), you can effectively eliminate all human presence from your images if you choose to do so.

To further showcase this, starting with a clear/normal shot 1/25 shot at f/22 you can see that while slowed, there’s still some human and automotive action going on in my scene.

Throwing on the CPL and VND combo filter allowed me to both cut through reflections, glare, and some haze while enhancing some of the colors in the scene, while keeping things pretty close to the previous shot by only adding a small amount of Neutral Density to the frame.

Ramping things up to it’s “maximum” level of ND and increasing the shot time to two-seconds, we’ve effectively eliminated all of the traffic from the street below. It might be hard to see but there’s just a subtle amount of ghosting left on the street where the cars should/would be.

To prove just how strong the ND and CPL was on this particular frame, here’s what happens when we leave the same settings on the camera and remove the filters;

To be fair, I even lowered the exposure by two or three levels in lightroom on this just so you could see the same structure of the houses and prove the point that even in broad daylight, the CPL and VND combo lens filters can provide some insane level of control over your images, giving creatives the freedom to eliminate tourists and busy motion from their landscape and cityscape shots.

Adding more Neutral Density like the ND1000 (ten stop ND) you could take exposures several minutes long that would effectively turn rough waters into a smooth glassy surface.

Regardless of what combination of accessories and filters you choose to go with, K&F CONCEPT has managed to break the barrier of entry for most creatives by providing some impressive quality products at a surprisingly affordable price. Especially when you consider the square-filter kits most of us old-schoolers are used to which can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to round out, the K&F CONCEPT brand has provided its users with a remarkable lineup of high-quality, actually-useful, and fun-to-use filters (and accessories) at an incredibly fair price.

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Full disclosure: This sponsored article is brought to you by K&F CONCEPT.