It seems like successful Kickstarter campaigns that get funded through the roof and still manage to deliver on time are a rarity these days, but one successful company is back with version two of their ND filter system.
Back in 2015 Aurora Aperture was launched on Kickstarter with their PowerXND 2000 ND filter, which featured an impressive 11 stops of ND coverage while maintaining excellent color accuracy and image quality. The campaign was a huge success for the company, which saw them blow through their funding goal by over 500%. Now, three years later, Aurora Aperture is back with a new version of their PowerXND system, the PowerXND Mark II.
Just like the first version of the PowerXND, the PowerXND-II features 11 stops of ND coverage, except this time the company has split the coverage across two filters; the PowerXND-II 128 and the PowerXND-II 2000. The Power XND-II 128 has an ND coverage of 1 to 7 stops, while the PowerXND-II 2000 has ND coverage from 5 to 11 stops. But this is not just a simple product update; the company has taken customer feedback for the last three years on their designs, usability, and functionality and has implemented a number of improvements to their PowerXND-II filters which will make them better suited to both photographers and videographers.
Currently, the PowerXND-II filter system is on Kickstarter with about 13 days remaining and the campaign has already blown past their original goal of $15,000 and is (as of this writing) sitting just above the $45,000 mark. The company also says that the filters themselves are virtually ready to ship as well, so they should be able to start getting these filters out to their Kickstarter backers fairly quickly (a couple of months) following the end of the campaign at the beginning of July.
The filters are well regarded and thanks to discounts on the Kickstarter campaign you are able to get your hands on a filter for as little as $45 on a small filter (37mm-46mm) that the company says will retail around $89. Filters in the range of 49-62mm can be had for as little as $75 — a really nice savings over the expected MSRP of $145.
So as you can see, if these filters are something that you are interested in, it would make a lot of sense to get in on these now while you can enjoy a pretty hefty discount on the costs you can expect if you wait until these start being sold in retail.
For full details on the PowerXND-II filter system, the campaign, or to back the project yourself, head to their PowerXND Mark II Kickstarter page.
