Those days when the lens filter was considered a luxury are long gone. Lens filters are a necessity for any photographer who wants to add different light effects to their images. The lens filters not only protect the lens but also enhance image quality with advanced optical features that minimize color aberration and light fall offs.
The Kenko lens filters are made with premium quality Japanese glass that guarantees optimal image quality. The filter glass is covered with a thin, anti-glare coating to prevent any glaring effect. With all these features, Kenko filters come at a reasonable price compared to other big lens filter brands.
The Kenko filters empower you to be more creative in your photography. Often, it’s challenging to find the most suitable and compatible filters with your camera lens. The following guide is a comprehensive compilation of different Keno filters. It will give you an in-depth understanding of the different features, functionality, user interface, and build design of various Kenko filters.
Kenko is a leading brand in the filter industry that offers a diverse variety of filter types. These include the following twelve types:
- Protector
- UV
- PL
- ND
- Astro
- Black and white
- Close-up
- Color control
- Color enhance
- Cross effect
- IR
- Soft effect
Realpro Protector
Kenko has designed this filter to protect your lens from any physical harm. The fine and clear glass of this Realpro Protector filter doesn’t affect the image quality. This filter is best for travel photographers.
Anti-Stain Coating (ASC)
This advanced coating is not made for the protection of the filter glass, but it also serves that purpose. It doesn’t allow any water drops and moisture to touch the surface. This coating causes any water droplets on the surface to glide down from the surface of the filter. This means you don’t need to clean the glass filter each time, due to this self-cleaning coating. This is an excellent feature because the less you touch the surface, the lower the chances of getting scratches on the filter glass.
The filter’s surface is ultra-smooth, which makes the removal of dust particles pain-free. ASC significantly reduces the time you need to clean the filter, which is excellent for people who travel often.
Anti-Reflecting Multi-Coating
The optical sensors of the latest digital SLR cameras are highly sensitive to the incoming light. This coating technology maximizes light transmission through the lens for a sharp and clear image. This coating also minimizes light flare and ghosting from unwanted light rays.
Filter Lens Size
Kenko has designed this Realpro Protector in a variety of sizes, starting from a minimum size of 37mm to a maximum of 95mm for non-reflex cameras. The maximum available size is 105mm for telephoto zoom lenses.
Build Quality And Design
The Realpro Protector comes with a dual purpose black almite frame that serves a dual purpose. The black frame reduces any undesired light reflection, and the matte finishing increases the friction between the frame and finger for easy use. Kenko has designed a slim casing for the Realpro Protector to nullify any vignetting effect. This makes it an ideal choice for wide and ultra-wide-angle lenses.
The frame comes with knurling edges to avoid slipping through your hands during the attachment and removal process. The edges of the filter glass are protected with Kenko black rimming technology, which reduces the internal light reflection between the filter and the lens. The outer side of the rim is coated with black ink that prevents the light from leaking outside the lens.
Celeste UV
Kenko has designed this lens filter for professional photographers by incorporating anti-reflection and anti-stain coating with a UV filter. To reduce any negative impression on the image, this filter ensures negligible negative interference with the light.
Low Light Reflection
This filter is protected with 18-layers of anti-reflection super ZR-coating. The light reflection level is reduced to 0.2%, which translates to almost 100% light transmission to the lens. The filter glass is transparent, unlike tinted optical glass.
Oil And Water Repellent Technology
The anti-stain coating (ASC) effectively repels oil, water, and other smudges from the filter glass surface. ASC reduces the time taken to wipe the glass due to its self-cleaning water repellent ability.
UV Filter
The filter is made with UV-cut glass, which blocks any UV light from entering the lens. This ensures that your lens can be used for outdoor daylight photography.
Frame Structure
The frame of this filter is ultra-thin. It’s made with aluminum and coated with black matte paint. The thin frame makes this lens ideal for use with wide-angle lenses without causing vignetting.
PRO1D Circular PL (W)
This filter lens by Kenko allows you to remove unwanted light reflection caused by non-metallic surfaces like water and glass. The PRO1D circular PL offers the user inventive polarizing glass material, which corrects any image color difference between reality and what shows up on the DSLR camera viewfinder.
PL-Filter
PL filters can eliminate light glare when they are used at an angle ranging from 30 to 40 degrees with respect to the reflective surface. This implies that when the sun is directly overhead at an angle of 90-degrees, the PL filter’s performance will be at the lowest level. You must rotate the filter to adjust the polarizing filter to achieve minimum glare.
Light polarization is a phenomenon commonly observed when distant objects are photographed in broad daylight. It causes the scenery or landscape to appear bluish. This PL filter can significantly reduce the bluish effect and softness of the atmospheric haze.
Digital Multi-Coated
The lens flare and ghosting effect are reduced by the digital multi-coated filter glass.
Build Design
The frame structure of this filter is made with aluminum with a matte satin finish that reduces light reflection between the filter glass and the lens. The filter glass comes with a black rim to further minimize the reflection at the edges. The frame is ultra-thin designed to hold a lens cap. The edges of the frame are non-slippery to provide friction when removing and attaching the lens filter.
Realpro ND4
This lens filter performs exceptionally well with portrait lenses in bright light conditions. This lens filter is designed to reduce the volume of light entering the lens, in addition to the protection and security of the lens. You can achieve a shallow depth of field with a shutter speed of fewer than 1/4000 seconds with this Realpro ND4 lens filter.
Neutral Density Filter
The Kenko Realpro ND 4/8/16 is a neutral density filter that reduces the amount of light that enters the lens. With the reduction in light intensity, you can capture photographs with a wide-open diaphragm. An ND filter not only decreases the light intensity, but it also makes the density uniform throughout the image to provide color balancing. This filter can be coupled with other UV and C-PL filters to improve image quality.
4/8/16 Filter
This filter is used with a high-sensitive DSLR camera to achieve a shallow depth of field in portrait images. This ND filter can be used for multiple purposes like portraits, nature close-ups, and videos. The number of ND numbers can be changed from 4 to 1000 depending upon the F-stop reduction. As the ND number increases, the proportion of transmittance changes from 25% to 0.1%. You need to change the ND number in a wide-open diaphragm in order to reduce the over-exposure of the background objects.
ND Vacuum Deposition Technology
Neutral density is achieved when the ND substance is evenly coated on the filter glass surface in a steam oven. This even coating is only achieved under exceptional circumstances of vacuum and heat. You can achieve constant color balance in the images you capture using this Kenko Realpro ND glass filter.
IR Pollution
Many photographers are concerned about IR pollution, which modifies the color of dark objects when captured with long shutter speed. Due to the ND vacuum deposition technology in this filter, you can capture bright photographs by controlling the transmitted light intensity to control for IR pollution.
Build Design
The filter comes in a slim frame to reduce vignetting in wide-angle lenses. The matte finish of the frame reduces the light reflection and adds to the friction between the frame body and hands. The lens filters come in a wide variety of sizes ranging from 49mm to 82mm.
Astro LPR Type 1
This filter lens is designed to capture celestial bodies. It can only capture the light from stars and comets and discards all unwanted light to increase the sharpness and contrast of your image. The filter is able to distinguish between the two types of light coming from the head and tail of a comet.
Astronomic Filter
Kenko has designed a special astronomic filter to differentiate between color shifting in a broad spectrum of the sky. Another challenge this filter helps with is capturing sharp photographs of the night sky with prolonged exposure.
Light Transmission
The Kenko Astro LPR type 1 can transmit only three types of main light – red, green, and blue spectrums coming from the celestial bodies. It allows the lens filter to capture distinct comet colors with low exposure.
Coating
The filter glass is coated using ion-assisted deposition technology to capture light celestial bodies. The desired coating does this by spraying ion particles to achieve a consistent multi-layer surface. This coating also provides glass protection by making the glass surface of the lens harder.
Astro Filter Limitation
You can observe some color shifting compared to reality due to a wide range on the light spectrum. The colors shift, especially in the peripheral areas of the captured image. Hence, you may need to use color correction in image post-processing.
Filter Size
This Astro lens is available in different sizes like 48, 52, 67, 72, and 77mm. This lens is best suited to fit the lenses of telescopes, DSLR cameras, and other spotting scopes.
Comparison
The protector lens filter is a basic filter that comes with standard functions to protect the lens and minimize light reflection. A UV filter has advanced features, allowing it to absorb UV rays and help you capture clear photographs. A UV filter is one-step forward from the basic protector filter.
The polarized glass is also an advanced filter. This not only reduces light reflection but also minimizes any bluish polarized effect in the image when used at 30 to 40 degrees angle of view. PL filters are best to use in broad daylight to capture landscape photographs. A polarizing filter can be combined with other filters, such as ND, to increase the image quality.
Kenko incorporates the latest optical technology in its filter glass by introducing neural light technology to control the intensity of the light entering the lens. ND filters are used to achieve a motion effect with long exposure in wide aperture with subjects such as waterfalls. The neural density is achieved by coating the lens with ND substance in a vacuum. This filter is suitable to capture portraits and nature close-ups in broad daylight.
Astro filters are a completely different type of filter, designed to capture photographs of the night sky. The technology used in the Astro filter differs from the rest of the filters as it comes with the ability to distinguish between the three basic colors (green, red, and blue) in low exposure.
One thing is common among all these filters. Their frames are made with aluminum to make them durable yet lightweight. The filter’s glass is protected with black rims, which not only protect the glass but allows the filter glass to fit perfectly on the lens. The black rim reduces the light refection by stopping any undesired light coming in from the filter edges.
Kenko lens filters are slim and sleek and don’t hinder any lens cap operations. The frame structure is the same in the majority of the lenses with a slim frame, knurling edges, and black matte finish. Kenko has designed a variety of filters that can aid any type of photography and help you solve any kind of lens issue.
