Swift… not a word generally associated with camera filters, but H&Y Filters’ new “REVORING Swift” system recently landed on Kickstarter and seeks to change that. The REVORING is an entirely magnetic and fully modular filter system. This allows you to instantly swap filters, cameras, or other accessories. Let’s see what you get for about $219. In the above image, the Sigma fp-L is kitted out in a cine-style rig using the REVORING Swift. Using the same REVORING Swift system (depending on what parts you own), I can kit out the Sigma dp0 for landscapes with CPL and graduated filter. Most of the parts are magnetic or quick-release so that I can swap them over quickly. In just a few seconds, I could have the MattBox on the Sigma dp0 and the Grad filters on the FP just by simply grabbing them off and slapping them onto the other camera.
How does REVORING Swift work?
The base of the REVORING Swift system is a three-layers setup. Let me go over those, one by one.
A – the REVORING Base
The base parts are anything that connects to your camera. This could be any of the REVORING family like the REVORING CPL we reviewed, a dedicated screw-in magnetic adaptor, or one of their specialized wide-angle lens adapters*.
The benefit of using the REVORING adaptor is that you can swap the filters easily between lenses, even with different filter threads. This is thanks to its unique aperture-style mounting system. The downside is that the extra width of the adaptor can cause vignetting on some wider angle lenses, particularly when stacking components.
The screw-in magnetic adaptors get around by bringing the filters closer to the lens but at the loss of functionality. You could fit screw-in magnetic adaptors to each of your lenses, but that would make all your lenses much wider and take up lots of space in your bag unless you screwed the adaptors on and off all the time, which defeats the point.
After fitting your base, you can now stack any of H&Y’s circular filters designed for the REVORING before moving on to B.
B – The REVORING Bridge
The bridge component converts the standard magnetic circular fitting used on the “A- Base” to the wider “C- Top Accessories” mount with little notches that lock the accessory in place so they can’t freely rotate. Currently, there are two bridge units. One is the Swift Magnetic Bridge Ring, and the other is the Swift Drop-in Filter Rack that can have the BASE fitting to connect directly to the “A-Base” or the “C- Top Accessories” fitting.
The Swift Drop-in Filter Rack allows you to use one of H&Y”s many drop-in filters and offer a rotation dial to control the inserted filter. This is great for VND, CPL, or effect filters, and you can stack drop-in racks if you wish. While you could technically freely rotate any of the attached filters or components, so far, they are magnetic; this would also rotate any attached “C- Top Accessories,” which leads us to C.
C – REVORING Top Accessories
After fitting the bridge component like the H&Y Magnetic Adapter Ring pictured above, you are now free to place others like the Drop-in Rack, matt box, rubber hood, or even the 100mm holder. The Swift Drop-in Filter Rack can be stacked with other “C-Top Accessories” as it keeps the “C-Top Accessories” fitting on the other side, but most “C-Top Accessories” are end components that finish off the setup.
The Matt Box is lightweight, and it’s easy to adjust the carbon hood using the dial to lock it in place. It also comes with some extra mounting threads to further accessorize your rig. Just don’t put anything too heavy on there. Not just because it’s a magnetic connection, but it’s not a great idea to front-load your lenses, particularly if the lens barrel moves to focus/zoom.
The rubber hood is pretty basic and usually just used to block stay light hitting the glass. But as it’s rubber and you can collapse it down in size, you can push it onto a window forming a seal to block reflections.
My favorite part is the 100mm holder that allows me to mix both the Circular Magnetic filters with square ones. It has a little dial on one side to lock the first filter in place and can hold a few other filters on top without issue. I’ll put up a sample a little later, showing the difference these filters can make.
One thing to remember and that I said previously is that the “C – Top Accessories will not fit directly to the “A – Base” adaptor due to the different fittings as you can see above and require a “B – Bridge” part to make the connection. Still, this offers a significant amount of customization for the user and leaves the system open-ended enough for H&Y to bring out new components to expand that even more.
Setting up the REVORING
I realize that I’ve spent a lot of time going over how the system works, but I shot a sequence showing it at various stages to show how it works. Keep in mind these things fit in seconds due to being magnetic or quick release in the case of the REVORING.
REVORING impact on Image Quality
Having an easy-to-use and highly customizable filter system is great, but it’s only as good as the filters you have on the system. Thankfully we have no problem here as H&Y filters are excellent.While I didn’t test every filter, I selected a few to go over, so let’s look at some test shots.
Looking at the overall comparison image, we can see that they don’t vary too much. The ND filter has a slight blue cast, but it’s something that is very easy to correct.The Black Mist Filter’s color contamination is coming from the lights in the scene as you would expect but otherwise very neutral. The Blue streak has an added blue cast from the blue lines running across its surface but otherwise looks good.
Sharpness-wise, the filters all hold up very well. The Black Mist and Blue Streak filters look a little softer due to the lower contrast that these filters give, but the sharpness is still there.I did shoot with a few other filters like the CPL, grad, and other NDs, with the results being consistent throughout the range, offering outstanding sharpness and very little or no color cast. Instead of just shooting in a studio, I went outside and shot some real-world examples using a combination of filters. I wanted to share this sunset looking towards the Isle of Arran in Scotland. Here’s a step-by-step on how the filters helped me create the image.
Firstly I added the Black Mist Filter, as you can see bottom left. This allowed some of the orange color to contaminate the shadow areas creating a haze effect and adding more atmosphere to the shot. I then added a 3stop soft grad filter to create more drama in the sky, and lastly, adding an ND filter and letting my Sigma fp-L do a 500s exposure at iso6 created the final image on the bottom right. Even shooting through several filters and 500-second exposure (thankfully, it was a calm day), the sharpness was still good, as you can see in this crop.
Concluding Thoughts
I’m honestly very impressed with the “REVORING Swift,” Using the system is a joy. Not only can you swap the kit from one camera or lens to another quickly. But you can stack or swap out individual parts quickly, customizing the unique filters to your shooting situation. This adds a lot of creative freedom and frees up time you’d usually take for screwing around (pun intended). Here are a few more sample images created using the system. Does it live up to the Swift name? Personally, I think it does, and I look forward to seeing what else they will bring to the system. Head over to Kickstarter to learn more about the REVORING swift system (starting at $219).
