Breakthrough Photography, the small, independent San Francisco-based maker of some of the finest glass photographic filters and step-up rings, has just launched its latest Kickstarter campaign. I am a customer of theirs and I only just found out about it, by sheer accident. Companies of all shapes and sizes are increasingly relying on social media to get the advance word out on new product launches and existing product updates, as well as apparently creaky old email lists, and it SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK, especially when Kickstarter Campaigns featuring earlybird discounts are involved. I don’t know what the answer is but surely this ain’t it.
That aside, Breakthrough Photography’s campaign was launched mere minutes ago at the time of writing, and two out of four pledges are already gone, testimony to the quality and popularity of the company’s products as well as their unique solutions.
I became a Breakthrough Photography customer for two reasons. The most urgent was that I needed a screw-on ND, CPL, and UV or protection filter solution that fingers and hands damaged by an accident at an unsafe state government workplace could attach and detach while minimizing risk of dropping. Breakthrough’s traction frame was the answer.
The second was that I was becoming tired of the myriad of subtle and coarse variations in colour and sharpness I was seeing in other quality brand filters I owned and had paid plenty for. Having to do custom white balances every time one changed a filter was getting beyond a pain.
Graham Clark of Breakthrough Photography does a great job of illustrating these problems in his Performance Gallery and other informational assets on the website but one thing rarely if ever pointed out is that his filters are excellent for video as well as stills photography.
I now add the cost of a Breakthrough Photography UV filter and step-up ring into my new lens budgets, and as the variety of the video work I take on expands, will be factoring in the new square and rectangular filters and filter holder introduced in this Kickstarter Campaign that has already broken through its $50,000 goal with 31 days to go. I will be replacing non-Breakthrough brand filters and step-up rings as finances permit.
I have said it a few times already elsewhere on this site and others, but Breakthrough Photography’s trademark brass CNC-machined traction frames are sheer bloody genius. That and the company’s filter colour neutrality and sharpness should be an inspiration to other top-quality filter makers.
Breakthrough Photography’s screw-on filters and step-up rings are not the universal answer though. I use mirrorless cameras and many lenses in the Fujifilm, Olympus and Panasonic lens systems have filter diameters in sizes for which Breakthrough does not cater.
I hope that will not always be the case. At the moment I rely on second-best UV and protection filter brands for these lenses and multi-brand, multiple step-up ring kludges for lens filter diameters that Breakthrough does not make filters or step-up rings for right now.
Those second-best filter and step-up ring solutions are made of aluminium, not the far superior brass, and tend to bind and cross-thread. Brass is always better and brass traction frame best of all.
Breakthrough Photography’s current missing diameters include 37mm, 39mm, 43mm and 46mm. I am hoping Mr Clark will see fit to add those diameters to his offerings soon. Potentially dangerous kludges have no place in a working professional’s kit.
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Header image made from screenshot of Breakthrough Photography’s Kickstarter campaign page then processed with Affinity Photo and Alien Skin Exposure X2.
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