Step Up Adapters For The Nisi Filter System

Original Image Source: Click here.

While viewing the posts from photographer / blogger Mattias Burling in April, I stumbled upon one about two favorite accessories for his Ricoh GR III, a compact camera similar in size and performance to the Fuji X100. The post convinced me (no great effort) to purchase the Light Pix Q20. In addition, I bought the NiSi Filter System which was also available for the Fuji X100 series of cameras. It is basically a filter holder that can hold any two (or one) of the four glass filters supplied in the Pro Package: A 3-stop ND filter, a Graduated ND filter, a polarizer, and the cooling filter for taming incandescent light sources when shooting night scenes. All of this filtration goodness was packed in a convenient protective case.

Mr. Burling's description of the polarizer really got to me. This shot that I made in 2021 was my wake-up call on blue sky reflections on water. In this lucky accident, I managed to grab this photo where the sky's reflection added some visual interest to the image. Subsequently, I started to think about how I might better control reflections when they were part of the final composition. 

I took the filter kit and my X100S out for a test drive but couldn't find any suitable reflections, even though I was standing in front of the koi pond in San Mateo's Central Park. Since it was designed for the X100, it was easily threaded onto the camera once the protective bezel ring was removed. Unfortunately, no suitable photograph was produced.

Adaptations For Other Lenses: Since I now own a fleet of compact, manually focused lenses, it seems logical that I have adapters for all of them. For the moment, I am imagining a lightweight walk-about system consisting of three prime lenses with the filter kit and an appropriate collection of adapters. I chose these three because the their aperture and focusing rings are similarly positioned on the lens body, and the directions of rotation are the same.

• TTartisans 17mm F 1.4: 39mm filter threads
• TTartisans 35mm F 1.4: 40.5mm filter threads
• 7Artisans  55mm F 1.4: 49mm filter threads

Step Up Adapters: In an earlier post I explained that a special adapter, a male male 49mm adapter to be exact, would be needed.  This would convert the 49mm female Nisi filter holder to a conventional 49mm male thread. With that done, I purchased some Step Up Adapters to allow the lenses to mount a larger accessory. For these three lenses I would need both a 39 to 49, and a 40.5 to 49  step up adapter. In addition, I bought a 43mm and a 46mm for use with my other lenses. Now I can potentially use any of the four kit filters with any of my manual primes, since none accepts a filter larger than 49mm. 

By adding these simple adapter rings, I added a lot of filtering potential to my manually focusing lenses. So little space, so much potential. Now all I need is some time to test the system out.