I've been looking for the right ND filters for my Mavic for awhile now. Got burned by one filter set purchase that gave me motor overload messages and gimbal alerts when I tried using them. I was thinking about getting Polar Pro's Cinema Series filters. Do you happen to be familiar with them or know if they are worth getting? Or are the Taco filters the way to go do you think?
Thanks for any input you can give me. I don't want to waste my time or money again.
I've used the Cinema Series NDs, which PolarPro was kind enough to send at a residual fee, when I complained about having just bought the original ones (...which must be off the gimbal for initialization...) and being then faced with improved versions, launched so close to those first series.
The Cinema Series looks sleek and the ND filtering, itself, is pretty color neutral with good overall optical quality. I
really wanted to keep using them.
Unfortunately, I started having gimbal initialization errors, due to the fact that I was not pushing the filters all the way in to the correct resting position.
I suspect that most of the gimbal overload alerts reported here and in other resource sites, although many times blamed on weight tolerances, might actually stem from the same error by users: If the filters do not rest at the appropriate "full aft" position, even for 1 or 2 mm, the gimbal head will hit the mast during initialization and an alert will issue.
...but when I investigated
why I wasn't pushing the filters all the way in in the first place, I came to the conclusion that it was because they offered an inordinate amount of resistance getting to that final correct position.
This, all by itself, wouldn't be a problem but it turned out that, if fitting them all the way in already required some very positive pressure, taking them out, then, turned out to be almost impossible.
During some testing, here in my home office, some days ago, it took me almost 20 minutes to remove one of the filters from the camera with me getting increasingly worried that the disproportionate amount of force I was applying with 2 fingers on one hand or the balancing force I was applying to the gimbal on the opposite direction, to prevent it from being forced forward, would result in a serious mishap, as one of the 2 pairs of fingers slipped, resulting in destructive moments to one of the sides.
I finally had to resort to a set of long nose pliers (!) and, very gently, had to make small-steps incremental pulls on the filter while rotating it, for it to finally come off. A very unpleasant experience...
Jeff, from PolarPro has advocated here that the filters should be pulled with the finger pads but that assumes that people have quite narrow and long fingers, for such approach to work on such a confined space to work in. Still, in my case, not even that resulted, function of the resistance offered by the filter coming off.
It seems that not all filters offer this kind of absurd resistance coming out but, to me, and not matter how much I appreciate PolarPro continued and effective efforts to make things right, my experience with their filters has terminated.
I suspect though, that, in the future, they might come up with a third approach to the filters, one that solves all reported problems by means of design and tolerances and adjustments and, if that happens, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend their products.
As it is, I am now waiting for my Taco-RCs and will see how that goes.
Hope this helps.
MK
