Improve Your Smartphone Filmmaking and Photography | Sandmarc Hybrid ND/PL Filters

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another video. My name is Mario So. In today's video, I want to talk about a set of filters that are a must-have in your toolbox if you are a smartphone filmmaker or photographer. If you're new here, please make sure to subscribe for future content similar to this video, and if you're already subscribed, thank you guys so much for being here again.

In today's video, I want to talk about a set of filters by a company called Sandmarc. A little disclaimer is that this is not a sponsored video, but Sandmarc did send me these filters to try out. These filters by Sandmarc are for smartphones, and they are hybrid filters. That means that they have Polarizer and ND included in them. If you use Polarizer filters and ND filters in your phone footage, the footage that you take on your phone outdoors is going to have a lot more dynamic range, and you'll be able to get more of a smooth and cinematic footage. These filters that I got are specifically made for the iPhone. They're compatible with a lot of the current models from recent years, but you can check in their website to make sure that the filters that you get are compatible with your specific smartphone.

Sandmarc ND filters are pretty much sunglasses for your camera. They allow you to match your shutter speed to double your frame rate, so you're able to get smooth, cinematic motion blur, and this makes the footage look less choppy, as opposed to when you're using a very high shutter speed. For example, in this shot with a high shutter speed, the motion of the cars don't look normal as the way our eyes are usually accustomed to seeing motion blur, and it just looks a little bit unnatural. But, if you match your shutter speed to double that of your frame rate, you'll be able to get a more natural motion blur similar to what our eye sees.

The problem with this is that you try to match that shutter speed to say, if I'm shooting at 24 frames per second, is that you're going to be letting a lot of light into your image and you're going to get an overexposed and unusable image. The solution to that is by bringing in the Sandmarc ND filter to block the amount of light coming into your camera.

Another benefit of using the Sandmarc ND filter is that you're able to shoot long exposure photos during the day when you're outside. You're able to shoot long exposure photos, for example, of running water, flowing water, of cars during the day, or any motion whatsoever that you want to exaggerate. In order to create a long exposure, you really need to slow down the shutter speed, but that means that you'll be letting in a lot of light into your camera. Enter and the filter, and you're able now to block the amount of light coming in and get your long exposure shot.

Now, a Polarizer filter allows you to increase the dynamic range in your image. This is particularly useful if you're outdoors and you're shooting a scenery with a lot of sky or perhaps some water. With the Sandmarc Polarizer filter, you're able to bring back a little bit more of that blue, especially if you're shooting skies. Another useful feature of a Polarizer filter is to reduce glare and reflections in your image, and this can be caused by many things such as water or glass, for example. Now that we know what ND filtration does and what Polarizer filtration does, let's look at these filters from Sandmarc.

These filters from Sandmarc come in this little soft pouch and you get three of them. You get the ND64, ND32, and ND16, so there are three filters, all with polarizing filtration, but with different strengths of ND. We also get a clip with the thread. You'll be attaching the clip to your phone and thread that filter.

Setting up the Sandmarc filter is actually very straightforward. You would just select the filter that you want to use, the 16, 32, or 64. The higher the number, the more light you'll be able to block in your scene, so if you're in a really sunny day, you would want to use the 64, and if you're in a cloudy or maybe it's not that bright outside, you can use an ND16. You can just thread the filters into the clip and then you'll clip it onto your phone.

Another thing about these Sandmarc filters is that they have a Circular Polarizer, which means that you can rotate these filters, and you get this circular polarizing function so that you can adjust the polarizing filtration according to your liking, depending on what you're shooting. One thing to note about Polarizer filters is that you usually get best results if you're shooting away from the sun towards the direction where the sun is facing or about 90 degrees from the sun. If you're shooting directly at the sun, the effect on the Polarizer filters isn't that great, and you usually get a lot of flaring that you may not like.

Another cool thing I want to say about the Sandmarc filters is that they are actually very light. The filters themselves are super light and the clip as well. This is very useful if you want to add them to your phone while using it on a gimbal, and because you won't be adding too much weight, hopefully, your gimbal can't handle it.

The clip itself as well as the filters are very solidly built in my opinion. The glass and these filters seems very well built as well. Overall, it seems like the Sandmarc filters are high quality.

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In terms of things that I really like, I wish that the Sandmarc filters came in a hard case, but the soft pouch is not a big deal. Another thing that I didn't like that I encountered when I was using these filters is that depending on the app that you're using, the clip actually covered parts of the corner of your screen, so I was not able to access those functions in the app, especially when I was using MoviePro to film some of my videos. I had to take off the filter, press the button, or access whatever I needed to access in that corner and then put it back on.

Other than that, I think the Sandmarc filters are a very great alternative for you to get very nice cinematic footage on your phone. I would recommend you get a filmmaking app such as MoviePro, FiLMiC Pro, or the Moment app, so that you're able to custom or manually set your shutter speed in your phone. If you're outdoors, it's very hard to keep a properly exposed image if you're shooting at a shutter speed of 1/48, so for that, you're going to be needing ND filters.

If you also like to take a lot of long exposure photos during the day, you're going to need something to block that light coming in. Hence, you need ND filters as well. If you want to take your smartphone filmmaking and photography to the next level, you definitely need ND filters and Polarizer filters, and these ones are a great option to get in my opinion. As usual, I'll be leaving links to these filters here if you want to check them out. I'll see you in the next one.