Genius Or Madness?

Whenever I see some of the new photographic accessories that have hit the market since the advent of the action camera and the mobile phone camera I am tempted to ask myself the question in our title. Am I seeing a good new thing or the start of the apocalypse? The rather well-built accessory that you see in the heading image is made by NiSi - who manufacture world-class filters for landscape photographers. You can buy their ND, graduated ND, and other fine filters together with universal or dedicated filter holders for nearly every camera or lens. If its film, digital, APS-C, full frame, medium or large format...they'll have a filter for it. Frequently the filters are brigaded up into sets with remarkably elegant cases. The landscape worker might dress like a day labourer as they struggle up the side of a mountain but their NiSI accessories are luxury-look. And then we have the people who take pictures with their mobile phones. Not just the selfists - I mean people who deliberately go out and use the mobile as their preferred capture device - even if they are not dealing with close-up or average subjects. There are, indeed, mobile phone landscape shooters. And they are going to get caught by the same uncooperative lighting conditions that affect their bigger brothers and sisters. The sky will be darker than the mountainside and the sea will be lighter than the shore. The little sensor in the phone will struggle valiantly to cope with the disparity in light levels and eventually either make one section look good at the expense of the other...or just make them both look half-bad. The landscapists with bigger cameras and lenses reach for a graduated neutral density filter to smooth out this problem - now the phone shooter can do the same. Clip on the holder, slide the filter up and down until you see a good exposure displayed, and take it. If you're going to be sending that shot to social media without getting a chance to edit or post-prod it into shape, this NiSI filter will make you look like you knew what you were doing. The polariser will get through glare on water. It'll do nothing for the glares you get if you take pictures on the train. I'm going to come down on the side of genius with this one. If you are happy with mobile phone land or seascapes, these filters will make you happier. They are small and you can carry them with you everywhere. There's a clip and pouch included.