Long-time readers of this website know that I’ve been a long-time supporter of cameras being more weather resistant, cleaning your camera sensors, and using protection on the camera to keep it functional. It’s one of the reasons why I created the Photography Care Program. But many mirrorless cameras don’t have protection for the sensor when you take the lens off. So I’ve been experimenting with Kolari’s Clip-in filters. And then I stumbled upon their Iridium filter — which is supposed to enhance the colors in your scene.
I don’t hear about or read about iridium often. I think the last time I did was when I was playing Borderlands 3 and you’d need to use iridium weapons to make your enemies radioactive. Then they’d explode and you’d do crowd control. Later on, while working on this review, I realized that Borderlands spelled it with an E instead of an I. This filter clips in over the camera sensor and protects it while enhancing the colors.
So that made me think: if I shot photos of people using the iridium filter, would they blow up on social media?
And more importantly, why would I go back to using social media?
And most importantly: is it radioactive?
I looked around online and found one explanation that said that only one type of iridium is radioactive and that the rest are pretty stable.
Then I looked on Kolari’s website, and according to them, it’s inspired by special sunglasses designed for color-blind people. As a legally blind photographer and journalist, that’s something that I’m very into the idea of. That then makes me wonder if those folks would be able to see colors if they looked at my images. Sadly, I don’t know anyone with color blindness anymore. But as I looked through the viewfinder, things were quite odd when I was using my contact lenses and when I switched to my glasses.
For background, I’m legally blind with an extreme variant of kerataconus. And last year, I had two reconstructive eye surgeries to stabilize my corneas. It’s given me a bit of my vision back, but I only ever see “normally” with contacts in.
Well, I’ve been using it for a few days now, and the third eye that I’ve grown due to the radioactivity can really see how beautiful the colors are in the images this filter can produce when shooting indoors. However, this filter can also make the white balance of the scene that you’re shooting look something like a cross-processed scene. So overall, you have to do a lot of editing to the images to really make those colors pop. Once you do just a bit of white balancing though, you’ll see quite a bit of pop.
If you’re a Sony shooter, then you’re probably used to doing a ton of editing. I remember going to various Sony Kando trips and sitting there wondering why people would want to shoot and then spend forever on their computers editing. All I wanted to do was make beautiful photos in-camera and then do a quick export, and get back to hanging out and networking with people. So it’s probably a philosophy that I’ll never understand; but if you consider yourself a photographer that wants to do more work in post-production, then consider these filters. Honestly, I’d even say that my Sony a7r III gets color rendition output of the Sony a7r V.
With that said, the iridium filter isn’t true to life as we can see it. It shows us the things that exist and that we aren’t even aware of. For example, at one point, I saw green light reflecting off of someone and then I realized that the light was reflecting off of green trees nearby. I imagine this is closer to how a Mantis Shrimp would see the world in terms of colors. Ultimately, it’s a filter for absolute color nerds — which you’ll be one of if you understand the printing process and actually print your photos.
Best of all, it doesn’t slow down autofocus performance at all. It also boosts colors into a place that’s incredibly unique, fascinating, and with a look that the human eye can’t even see. I adore this — but I really don’t like that I need to do so much extra work in post-production to get the colors to exactly where I want them. Once they’re there though, it’s hard to not love this filter.