Every now and then we come across a technical problem that not many people would ever come across or even consider an issue. The latest one of these was finding a suitable polariser that would fit on to the Schneider Kreuznach 28mm lens. Now this at first would seem like a straight forward issue to solve – check the stock of the big hitters like LEE or Cokin, place an order and it’s on its way to you. This unfortunately isn’t the case. To start with the Schneider 28mm requires its own specialised filter holder system – the LEE SW-150 – this system firstly is able to attach directly to the front of the lens ( this works around the fixed petal lens hood that stops conventional filter systems form being attached). Secondly the 150mm filters that this system uses are large enough to cover the full field of view of this super wide lens entirely without any edges creeping into the frame.
Luckily we already had the filter system from a previous shoot and a number of grads and ND filters that would work with it, however a polariser is always a nice addition to the kit. After a bit of research we found that neither LEE or Cokin produce a 150mm x 150mm polariser. We scoured the internet for movie/film filter companies but all were not the correct size. It was at this point that Steve at Teamwork Photo found us a solution with a Formatt Hitech 150mm glass linear polariser. Along with all the necessary parts to make it fit the SW-150 as the glass filter is 4mm thick compared to the usual 2mm resin filters that we usually use.
Here are a couple of comparison images from the test of the system earlier today –
The addition of a 150mm x 150mm filter of 4mm thick glass to the kit has made us rethink the way that we carry our filters around with us, knowing that it would be a lot more fragile we set about finding a solution – this resulted in this peli case set up that stores all of our 150mm filters the SW-150 and a couple extra 100mm filters for the other lenses.
A big thank you to Teamwork for the help in finding a solution to this and hopefully this is of help to anyone else also looking for a polariser for the 28mm PhaseOne LS Schneider Kreuznach lens.