We review a lot of accessories for drones, and if we give one of them the thumbs up, it’s because they do something great, or they save us time or it saves us money.
The FREEWELL Variable ND Filter 2 Pack for the Mavic Air 2 does all three. Extremely well.
Let me explain.
Without getting too technical (or opening up a debate) let’s all agree that if you want the best quality video from your drone (or any camera) you need to film in Manual mode….which means you’re going to need ND filters for most of your shoots. I won’t give you my ND Filters 101 (you can read that here) so just play along with the theme we have going.
We’ve been writing about drones since 2016, so you can imagine we’ve accumulated both a lot of drones and a lot of accessories of the years.
We gravitated to FREEWELL’s All Day 8 Pack very early in the game for a couple of reasons: FREEWELL’s reputation for quality, the lifetime guarantee, and the convenience of having pretty much every filter we could likely need for a day of video shoot under most conditions.
In fact we own FREEWELL’s 8 pack for every drone in our stable.
But the problem with drone ND filters is two-fold. It’s no fun swapping or installing filters, even under ideal conditions and it can waste a lot of flight and battery time. So many times we’ve dropped them, or smudged a fingerprint on one, in the haste of removing or installing.
FREEWELL has decided this needs to stop.
They emailed us just over a week ago to see if we would be interested in reviewing their ND filters for the DJI Mavic Air 2. We’d been doing a lot of articles and social posts on the Mavic Air 2, which caught their eye.
Of course we said ‘yes’, but asked if we could specifically review the new Variable ND 2 Pack. We’d been checking it out online, and it looked like it could be a game changer.
The package showed up a couple of days later, and we set to work trying them out.
The FREEWELL Variable ND 2 Pack for the Mavic Air 2 has two non-polarizing ND filters in it’s case. One covers 2 to 5 stops, which means it replaces four filtes: ND 4, ND8, ND16, and ND32.
The second filters filters 6 to 9 stops of light or ND64, ND128, ND256 and ND512.
Now you may be wondering about these higher ND128 and above filters. They’re mostly suited for still photography. Shooting at low ISO with these filters lets you stretch out shutter speed and capture amazing motion blur, like the image above. You’ll also pick up richer contrast and color. Think flowing rapids, waterfalls, or waves crashing against the shore. These filters offer a great challenge for taking your aerial photography to the next level.
On the 2 to 5 stop Variable ND filter there’s actually an extra setting: no filter. If you haven’t looked closely at the stock lens of the Mavic Air 2 you might not know that it doesn’t even come with lens protecting glass. No joke.
So this extra ‘no filter’ setting, that’s marked with the FREEWELL logo, on the 2 to 5 stop filter acts as a protective lens for you Mavic Air 2’s camera. Very smart.
We started to like the FREEWELL Variable ND 2 Pack just for the simplicity of only having 2 filters. As much as we love the 8 pack, we’d trade it in a heartbeat for the convenience of an always-mounted variable filter that frees up some real estate in our drone bag. (For the record, our Mavic 2 Pro FREEWELL 8 Pack takes up the same volume as an extra battery).
People love products that make their life easier. In case you haven’t noticed, people are paying a lot for this thing called ‘convenience’ these days.
So how much more convenient was it ‘swapping to the next stop’ with the Variable filter vs a traditional single stop filter?
Huge.
For this comparison I used the Mavic 2 Pro vs the Mavic Air 2. Single filter on the M2P, variable filter on the MA2.
From the time the Mavic 2 Pro landed on my palm, it took me 1m24s to power down, remove & replace the filter, power up and re-launch. That’s 4.5% of the Mavic 2’s battery life. Maybe some of you wouldn’t have powered the drone off, but I’ve seen enough gimbals go bad when you wrestle with them under power. Not worth it from my perspective.
With the FREEWELL Variable ND Filter on the Mavic Air 2 I ‘swapped’ to the next stop in a total of 15 seconds from the time it landed on my palm to when it took off again.
That’s an amazing time and battery saving convenience.
But convenience only gets you so far, the quality has to be there also.
As I said above, we’ve been using ND filters for years. And it’s not too hard to spot the one’s you shouldn’t buy. They’re on BangGood, Alibaba, Ebay and Amazon and have names you’ve never heard of. They have great prices but that’s it.
If you visit FREEWELL’s website, you’ll see pretty quickly all of the features allow them to have a lifetime guarantee. The Variable ND Filter 2 Pack for the Mavic Air 2 is a perfect example:
- Each of Freewell 4K Series optics are handcrafted precisely compatible to be used with Mavic Air 2 Drone
- Freewell GimbalSafe technology ensures each filter frame goes through a rigorous lightweight test putting no negative effect on your drone gimbal
- Waterproof, Dustproof, Scrathproof, Oilproof, Color Neutral coating makes sure you get the best possible image while shooting outdoors
- Freewell Variable ND Camera Lens Filters Kit consist of 2-5 stops & 6-9 stop
- Each filter kits comes with a robust magnetic filter case
So that covers the build quality and the warranty to back it up.
At the end of the day an ND filter has only one job: allow the photo/videographer control over the light entering the camera so you can shoot in the highest quality settings.
Cheap filters we’ve tested in the past failed this part miserably. We’ve tried ND32 filters that were identical to their ND16 partner. Or worse we’ve actually been able to see flaws in the optical coatings.
In all of our tests videos with the FREEWELL Variable ND 2 Pack we found zero detectable artifacts or aberrations in the final product in 1080p, 2.7K and 4K. To be honest, we really didn’t expect to.
One important piece of information we definitely need to share is that the FREEWELL Variable ND filters for the Mavic Air 2 are not polarizing filters.
Having both polarizing and non-polarizing filters on hand has always been a benefit to the FREEWELL All Day 8 Pack, so if polarizing filters is a ‘must-have’ feature, check that one out.
This was a fun review to complete. Sometimes you don’t realize until you have a better mousetrap in your hands how much you really wanted it to come along in the first place.
For us, the proof is absolutely in the pudding. At the end of our time with the FREEWELL Variable ND 2 Pack filter we had to make a choice: keep it on the Mavic Air 2 or not.
It was an easy choice. The fact that the variable filter covers 99% of ND Filter requirement for our typical video shoots, has a transparent ‘non-filtering’ setting that acts as a bonus lens protector, and saves me time, battery life and space in my drone….for just $49….makes this one of the easiest products we’ve ever had to review.
I can literally sum our review in 3 words, your choice: “Take my money” or “Buy this immediately”.
And we just clicked the ‘buy now’ for FREEWELL’s Variable ND Filter for the Mavic 2 Pro before writing this article.
You can watch our full video review of the FREEWELL Variable ND Filter 2 Pack for the Mavic Air 2 below.
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