Was at Focus in Birmingham today and pieced together a sparse few bits of information
Doug Murdoch was in town and I had a brief chat, it seems Think Tank has a new lens change satchel style pouch on the way in "a couple of months". They had working copies of it, and I have to say I was very impressed - it's the first bag I've actually been excited about. Unlike the current system of individual pouches on a belt, this looks a lot like a satchel bag with 2 or 3 (two different sizes) individual drop pouches. I've never been a fan of the individual pouches, but I'm really looking forward to picking up one of these when they hit the stores.
I also had a stop at the Lee Filters booth and they had a working solution of the 14-24mm filter system. First, it's really secure. There's no possibility of slipping or sliding, and as you'd expect from Lee it's very well put together. It's custom fit to the lens, and they might possibly introduce adaptors for other lenses.
Second, it is ridiculously large. I'd estimate the filter is about the size of a 6x8 print. Apparently it is possible to tease the smallest amount of vignetting if you rotate the holder to the extreme corners, but for all intents and purposes it works well - I realise now I omitted to have a snap. They also have an adaptor to let you use your normal Lee adaptors with the oversized holder. £320 inc VAT gets you the adaptor, holder, and a 0.75 ND Grad.
Also, and this is fresh out, they've just released their own 10 stop ND filter (in the normal Lee size). This is uncoated and retails (for now anyway) at £80 + VAT (about 15% more expensive than a 77mm B+W). It looked nice and had foam baffles on the inside to solve the problem of stray light with the 10 stop ND. It was available immediately, although when I had got there later in the day they'd already sold the stock they'd brought in.
Also interestingly in conversation about the "banding" issue that occurs with at least one of the other 10 stop NDs on the market, there was a suggestion that they have observed banding at the QC stage every now and then.
Doug Murdoch was in town and I had a brief chat, it seems Think Tank has a new lens change satchel style pouch on the way in "a couple of months". They had working copies of it, and I have to say I was very impressed - it's the first bag I've actually been excited about. Unlike the current system of individual pouches on a belt, this looks a lot like a satchel bag with 2 or 3 (two different sizes) individual drop pouches. I've never been a fan of the individual pouches, but I'm really looking forward to picking up one of these when they hit the stores.
I also had a stop at the Lee Filters booth and they had a working solution of the 14-24mm filter system. First, it's really secure. There's no possibility of slipping or sliding, and as you'd expect from Lee it's very well put together. It's custom fit to the lens, and they might possibly introduce adaptors for other lenses.
Second, it is ridiculously large. I'd estimate the filter is about the size of a 6x8 print. Apparently it is possible to tease the smallest amount of vignetting if you rotate the holder to the extreme corners, but for all intents and purposes it works well - I realise now I omitted to have a snap. They also have an adaptor to let you use your normal Lee adaptors with the oversized holder. £320 inc VAT gets you the adaptor, holder, and a 0.75 ND Grad.
Also, and this is fresh out, they've just released their own 10 stop ND filter (in the normal Lee size). This is uncoated and retails (for now anyway) at £80 + VAT (about 15% more expensive than a 77mm B+W). It looked nice and had foam baffles on the inside to solve the problem of stray light with the 10 stop ND. It was available immediately, although when I had got there later in the day they'd already sold the stock they'd brought in.
Also interestingly in conversation about the "banding" issue that occurs with at least one of the other 10 stop NDs on the market, there was a suggestion that they have observed banding at the QC stage every now and then.