The Mosaic Engineering moire filter

Mosaic Engineering’s anti-moire/aliasing filter for the 5DII really works. I’m surprised it’s as good as it is, with no meaningful degradation of the image. It seems to do about what the 5DIII does, but the image stays sharp.

These two shots were taken from frame grabs, then cropped in iPhoto to remove some proprietary client information. The shot without the filter is unusable. With the filter, the moire is very close to gone. You can see just a little bit of it but not much. When the video was playing full screen an an Apple Cinema Display monitor, you really have to know where to look to try to find the moire. For all practical purposes, it’s gone.

The filter arrived via 3-day Fedex on standard shipping. It came in a big Fedex envelope, and inside was a small plain cardboard box. Inside the box was some packing paper and my first thought was, “Surely they wouldn’t send the filter like that.”

No sweat. When I unwrapped the paper, there was a plastic container. Like an old 35mm still film container only bigger. The filter sits protected in a custom cut gray foam insert, and the little wire tool to remove it from the camera has its own slot as well. The container fits easily into my camera bag and provides a safe storage place for the filter when I take it out.

Generally, you can put the filter in and leave it. If you’re shooting a lot of stills, it would be a good idea to take it out so you can use the camera viewfinder if you want. When the filter is in place, the mirror is locked up, so you have to use live view mode.

Inserting the filter is simple. Take the lens off, turn on the camera, press the live view button so the mirror snaps up, and slide the filter in. It only goes in one way, label up, and the fit is perfect. No slop but not tight either. It’s perfectly designed for where it goes. Put the lens back on and you’re ready to go.

Removing the filter takes a little wire tool that’s included. Put one prong into a hole on the right side of the filter housing, the other prong into the other hole and pull the filter out. It comes right out, no hassle.

The filter is $385 for the 5DII version. Mosaic now has a new one for the 7D as well, for $325. Their website is complete with installing and operating instructions, and complete printed instructions come in the package.

http://www.mosaicengineering.com/products/vaf/5d2/main.html