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DJI Osmo Pocket 3/4: In-depth Review of the Freewell ND, CPL & Mist Filters for Cinematic Footage
In this in-depth review of all the Freewell ND, CPL & Mist filters for the DJI Pocket 3 or DJI Pocket 4, I test them to determine who should buy these Freewell filters and when they are right to be used on the DJI Pocket 3 or DJI Pocket 4.
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► CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:21 Disclaimers
01:17 Freewell Snow Mist & Glow Mist Filters
06:39 Freewell ND Filters
16:45 Freewell CPL Filters
22:36 The filter I couldn't review...
23:01 What is wrong with these filters?
24:27 Conclusion - Thanks for watching!
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Hello everyone! If you recently bought the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, you might be wondering why the footage of people online looks better than your footage. The answer to this might be that they're using some filters and today we've been testing all of the freewell filters to see when to use them and if they can really help make your image look better on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. For those of you who are new to this channel, I'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at this side. I recently filmed an in-depth review of the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 while I was in France and in Switzerland and I really regretted not having some ND filters during that trip. Around that time, Freewell actually reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to get some of their filters to test them out so I said definitely yes. I did ask for some specific ND filters and also the night filters so they just ended up sending all of them to me. Okay, so the first filters I want to talk about are actually the ones I use the least and not the ones I think are the most useful but definitely have a use case and some people really like them and these are the snow and mist filters. Inside of the case that Freewell sent me, I first of all have here two filters that are one eighth of a strength and these are the snow mist filter and the glow mist filter. Instead of the mega pack, there's also a stronger snow mist filter at one quarter of a strength. The first filter we're going to test here is the one quarter snow mist filter right here. I don't know if you can see but there's some texture inside of the glass here and that's what's going to create inside of the effect. So it's really easy on the Jackson Pocket for you. Simply come on the camera here, you just oops but you simply come here put it here, there's some magnets it's going to align perfectly all together. Then if we turn around here and look at this, so the filter what's doing right now it should make the image a little bit softer. It might be hard to see without the good lighting. Usually you want to use this when there's a much harder lighting so you want to have them there's like direct light or something like that or a lot of lighting in the background. It's really going to create a better effect in those cases but if I simply take it on and off here, but if you come here I can simply show you without. So my face here should be pretty sharp, really detailed, a lot of sharpening inside of it but now if you put the filter on and you look at my face it should be much nicer. There shouldn't be as much detail inside of it. Overall it can be a good filter if you're vlogging or something like that because you might get some nicer looking images of yourself. Using the mist filter that's one quarter might be a little bit too much. Usually you want these filters to be very subtle when you're taking the shot so you might want something that's not as strong, just creates a nice little effect but isn't as bad. So this is where the other filters I have right here come in. So first of all we can just open this one up. I want to say these little boxes are really great. They feel great in the hand, they feel that the filters aren't safe inside so I'm going to take off the filter right here. Whoa oh no whoops I hope the little filter is fine here but if we now put the one eighth of a filter and we turn the camera around right here we should actually see that it just creates a nice effect on my face here. It takes to make it a little bit less sharp, just makes it overall nicer. It also makes this trees and background and the overall scene a little bit nicer. Again I don't really think you need to be using these every single time you're vlogging or something like that using the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. It's really a specialty shot that can make your scenes look better and can help make you look a little bit better inside of the shots. So now let's test the Glow Mist filter. So the difference between the Snow Mist filter and the Glow Mist filter is pretty subtle in my opinion. I don't really see... oh no... another lens fall right here. Yes I'm having a few issues with my lens falling all the time. This is actually a good lesson. It's one thing I've learned with these filters, always bring some things to be able to quickly dry them off and clean them if you need to, especially in circumstances like this where there's a lot of snow or if you're in some rain or things like that. They're gonna get dirty, you're gonna touch them by accident, so you definitely want to have something like a cloth to be able to quickly dry them off and make them clean again. I've now put the Glow Mist filter on and you might see it looks a little bit different right here and if we look we can actually see some of the glowing in effect right here. So we can see the softer highlights inside the shot. We can also see the nicer shadows inside of it. It's just a little bit softer. I'm curious to know what you think about this effect. Is it something you like? Is it something you would use with your DJ Osmo Pocket 3? Do you think it's worth it? I actually have a little issue right now that it keeps fogging up because I fell in the snow and cleaned it up. Now it's heating up and creating some issues. This is definitely an issue with some filters when using them outside. I have the same issues on the big cameras. I will try to do a few shots here to compare with and without all these filters so you can get an idea of if they look good or not and how much they affect the shot in the end. This is shot number one, no filter on. This is now on with the Glow Mist filter 1/8. So what you should be looking at inside of the shot is the difference inside of the highlights here, how the detail looks inside of the shadows. These are the things that might change inside of the shot. Now I have the 1/8th snow mist filter on. This is now the snow mist 1/4 that is on. This is the first shot of my face with no filters on. This is with the 1/4 snow mist filter on. This is now the 1/8th snow mist filter on. This is the 1/8th glow mist filter on. [Music] [Music] If you're looking for the best filters to get cinematic results, you want to have some neutral density or ND filters. Now the question is why are ND filters so important to get cinematic results? The answer is that you want a very specific type of blur inside of your videos. If you're coming from photography or just starting out in filmmaking, it might seem very unintuitive that you want some blur inside of your video. But there's a very simple explanation for this. If you take your hand and you start waving in front of you, you're going to see that's a blurry image. It's not perfectly sharp. This is called motion blur and that's what we want inside of our videos. Now you might be wondering how to get some motion blur. The good news is that there's a super simple rule to follow and this rule is double your frame rate or the 180 degree rule. Basically, if you have a frame rate of 24 frames per second, then you want a shutter speed of around 1/40 of a second. If you have a frame rate of 30 frames per second, then you want to have a shutter speed of around 1/60 of a second. And finally, if you're filming at a frame rate of 120 frames per second, you want to have a shutter speed around 1/240 of a second. This is really important to follow because that is the rule that all the films and also all the tv shows are using to get some cinematic results. If I already got you confused, don't worry. We're going to go through step by step on how to set all of this up on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. So if you come here, the first thing we want to do is go inside of our video mode. I'm going to select my mode right here and make sure that our frame rate is at 4k 24 frames per second or whatever other settings you want to use. This is not important right now. But now if we start recording right here and I start waving my hand, we're going to see that the image is actually very jittery. When I move my hands here, it's not looking really good. It's not looking cinematic. So this is where we have to go inside of our settings and make sure that we go inside of a Pro mode. So step number two is coming inside of here. Come here on the side and you can enable or disable Pro mode. So we're going to put Pro mode on and then we're going to go inside of the exposure settings. So remember your double your frame rate rule. So if you come here, we're going to go on manual and we're going to select a frame rate that's about double what we have. There's no options for one over 40th of a second here. So we're going to go to the closest one, which is one 50th of a second. So let's just come here and look at this. But now if you look at our image, it's way overblown. This is basically the image is too wide. So if I come here and capture some video, this is totally unusable footage. This is because the image is overblown. Step number three is choosing the right ND filter for your camera. An ND filter is basically like some sunglasses, which allow to cut the amount of light that your sensor is going to receive. In the kit that Freewell sent me, there's seven types of fixed filters. So there's an ND8, ND16, ND32, ND64, ND128, ND256 and ND1000. It's the first time I see ND128 and ND256 inside such a kit. And this is awesome because often ND364 is not enough in a bright sunny day and ND1000 is too much. So having something in between is really going to be helpful on some bright sunny days. Now it's time to find the right filter for us. If you look on the Jazzmo Pocket 3 at the meter here, we're going to see there's at least two stops of overexposure. So let's come here and let's first take our ND8 filter and put it on. So we can see right away, it does improve the shot. We do see here that we still have 1.7 of overexposure, but we're also going to go check another setting I haven't talked about. And this is our ISO value. So I love using here the options here to leave it inside of a range. So the camera can adapt depending on how the lighting is adapting overall. So here I want to set it at 50 to 800 because I think the DJI Awesome Pocket 3 performs pretty well in those settings between a day. So I don't mind the camera moving around between those values. But now if you look at the EV, it's still way too bright and our ISO is around 50, which is what we want because I want to keep it as low as possible. So around 50 to 200. But if it goes a little bit over or under, I don't really mind. So we're going to confirm here. We're going to go back to the menu here. We're going to remove this ND filter. And now we're going to try a ND64. This is usually what works best for conditions like right now. So this is just trial and error and you kind of get to know over time which one looked good or not. So now if you come back here and we go in our exposure, we're going to see that the ISO is at 90. So this is a perfect setting for what we want. Now, if you come here on the camera, we'll go back to the main menu. We start recording and I shake my hand. Now we're going to see that if I pause this, there's some super nice motion blur inside of the video. So we achieve the results that we wanted. Now you probably realize it does take quite some time to set up all of those settings. So you definitely want to use one of the best new features on the J-OS One Pocket 3 and create a custom profile for the settings. So for this, we're going to go inside of the menu by swiping up here. We're going to go into custom profiles and I already have one here, but I'm going to override the 4K 16 by 9 24 frames per second. But it's also going to save our manual settings and the ISO settings we selected. So all we have to do here is click it, confirm and we're good to go. So now if you go inside of our different video modes, we can select the one right here. And if we check the manual settings here, we're going to see that everything is set up as we want at 150 for a second. And also we're going to have the ISO between 50 and 800. Now I have one little issue with the J-OS One Pocket 3 and is that it does show us a light meter here. So it's going to tell us if it's being over or under, if it's not inside of zero, we know that we reached the limit of the ISO, but it would be really nice to show the ISO also on this main screen. So we could know what is the issue if we're too bright, too low, and tell us when we have to change the ND filter. Because that's one thing that needs to be very clear. If you go from outside to inside or through trees or things like that, you might have to change the ND filters a couple of times during the day. All filters have one common issue, and this is that they affect the image quality. Cheap image filter can actually really make the image quality terrible and really good filters sometimes are extremely expensive. The thing I like with 3RL is that they offer high quality filters, but at a better price. But we haven't tested that yet on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, so let's go do that with the ND filters. We're looking for three main things. So first of all, is there any color cast? This is a different color inside of the image compared to the normal one. Then the second one is the vignette thing. This is typical when you have some ND filters and this is looking at the corners to see if there's any darkness inside of them. And finally, we'll look at if the image is sharp or not. A good filter won't affect the sharpness, a cheap one will affect the sharpness of the image. Our base image here has a clear blue tint, but there's no vignetting in the corners and the image is super sharp if we look at the trees in the bottom. The ND8 has a clear tint inside of the image. It's a bit more yellow than our base image, but there's no vignette in the corners, which is really nice to see. And also the details are really nice inside of the trees at the bottom. The ND16 has no vignetting in the corners. The colors are very similar to the ND8 and the sharpness is also pretty good. It's a little bit soft, but this is because it's started snowing a lot more. We can't see any of the background at this point because it's snowing so hard. The ND32 basically looks the same as the two previous ones we had, which means we have a slight color cast, the sharpness is really good and there's no vignetting in the corners. Again, the ND64 basically looks exactly the same as the previous ones we had. There's basically no difference inside of this one. For the ND128, there's a slight change inside of the color cast. It's a little bit more on the blue side here compared to the previous one, but there's still no issues with vignetting or the sharpness of the image. The ND256 has a bigger color cast. It's more on the blue side and the image is a little bit darker, but there's still no issue with the sharpness or the vignetting inside of this image. The ND1000 is the only one where we can really start seeing some issues. First of all, the color cast is much stronger. The image is much darker in this case and it's a little bit more on the blue side compared to the previous filters. Then the sharpness is not quite as good. I don't think it's a big issue, but it is a little bit there. Finally, there's a vignette. If you look in the corners, they're darker than the center of the image, so there's definitely some small issues inside of this filter. I'm really curious what you thought about these side-by-side tests I just showed. Were the results good? Do you think these are good filters? Let me know down in the comments below because I haven't had time to review them on a computer yet, so I'm really excited to see how well they perform. [Music] This is not a very long hard hike, but it's still pretty steep. We found my winter clothes and the camera gear. I'm actually sweating like crazy to get up there. It's kind of weird sweating so much when there's so much snow around and it's supposed to be a lot colder, but that's just hiking in the winter. One of the issues you have. [Music] [Music] I finally made it to the lake. It's beautiful. [Music] Now let's talk about another type of filters, and these are cross-polarized or CPL filters. Cross-polarized filters are very popular because they allow to modify the image in a bunch of different ways. They work by having two lenses. You always need two lenses with a bunch of lines in a certain direction, and when you turn them around, they're going to cross. Here is what they call the cross-polarized filters, and they're going to apply a polarizing filter to the image. You can play with the strength always to make it stronger or lighter depending on the lighting situation and how you want to have the effect on the image. So now let's go put a lens on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and talk about why these filters are so useful. The most common reason to use a CPL filter is going to be to remove some glare and reflections inside of your shot. I particularly like using CPL filters when I'm filming my devices, so that's my phone or computer, because with harsh light, you can get really distracting reflections inside of it. By simply turning the filter, you're actually going to be able to remove most of that reflection. It won't be perfect. You won't be able to remove everything, but it's going to be a lot less distracting, a lot more usable of a shot afterwards. It also works for water. I usually don't really use it for your water, but it can be useful in some cases when the water reflections or things like that are too distracting. Another reason to use a CPL filter on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is to get more details inside of blue skies. It works by removing the haze, also boosting the blue colors inside of the image, and making the sky overall a little bit darker. I definitely cannot demonstrate it today because there's only some white skies and gray skies today, but if you want to get some better details inside of a blue sky, you definitely want to be using a CPL filter on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. A third great reason to use a CPL filter on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is that it allows to get some more vibrant and colorful landscapes. This works by boosting some of the greens and the blue by cutting some of the other wavelengths inside of the image, but there's also another little trick. Because a lot of the foliage inside of the trees are reflecting some of the very harsh light on side of them, by cutting the harsh light reflection on the trees, you get more color out of it. So the trees that are green, blue, or things like that are going to look more intense inside of your scene in the end. There's a bunch of other reasons why CPLs are great, but these are the top biggest ones in my opinion, and why it's really useful to have them on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. The kit that Freewell sent me has one CPL filter and four ND plus CPL filters. These ND strength are ND8, ND16, ND32, and ND64. The reason you might want to use an ND plus a CPL filter is they can get the nice motion blur from the ND filter and then get the unique properties of a CPL filter. Now I'm going to do a side-by-side test just like I did with the ND filters. I'm expecting a little bit more of an effect just because CPL filters tend to have a stronger effect on the image, but we'll be looking for the same things, so color cast, vignetting, and sharpness of the image. Let's go do it. So here we have our base image with no filters on. The clear CPL filter has a green and yellow color cast which is typical for CPL filters. There's no issues with vignetting and it's super sharp when you zoom in. Surprisingly the CPL plus ND8 almost looks exactly the same as the clear CPL filter. We get the same results for the CPL plus ND16 filter. The CPL plus ND32 has a stronger color cast. There's also a little bit of vignetting inside of this image, but there's still no issues with the sharpness. The CPL plus ND64 has a clear color cast. It's a bit more red in this case. There's some vignetting but similar to the previous results and there's no issues with the sharpness. So one really nice touch Freewell did on these lenses is adding a little line to let us know where's the max polarizing effect. In the past, oftentimes with polarizing filters, I had to turn, turn, turn, and try and guess it was getting the maximum effect or not. Where you can simply align it and know that you're getting the maximum polarizing out of this filter. Now I got a question recently asking me if they should just leave a CPL filter on all the time and the answer is definitely no. There's some scenarios where CPL filter is actually going to create more issues than some benefits. The first one is if there's a sunset or anything that's very colorful like that, it's going to cut a lot of the reflections of the light that makes the whole scene nice and colorful. So your nice sunset might become a very dull sunset in the end. A second reason why you shouldn't be using CPL filters is for night video. It's not going to have any effect because there's not enough light reflecting on things and really creating issues. Yes, it could still be used if there's some reflections on some devices or things like that, but in general, it's just not useful to have a CPL filter in low light conditions. Overall, I do think that the CPL filter is a really nice thing to have, especially on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. It can really help you get some better shots, but again, just know when to use it, play with it, try to understand when it works or doesn't work for you, and that's how you're going to know when you can get the best results out of this little filter on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. There's actually one filter I won't cover inside of this video, and this is the night light pollution filter. Like you can see, it's been pretty gray these days in around Seattle, so I actually want to wait a little bit longer to get a nice clear night so I can go outside and film that video and really test in depth how well that filter works on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 when taking some video timelapses of the stars. As with any product, there's some downsides with using these filters. The first one is simply the price that they cost. The kit here is $289, though it is at $150 right now on their website. This is very expensive. If you don't want to have all the filters, I will link on my website some other options if you just want to buy some of these filters because you might not need all of them when taking some videos with the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. The second issue is actually that I'm just scared of breaking them or just damaging them over time. I keep dropping them because the magnet on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is so strong that when you pull them off, it's actually really easy to drop them afterwards. They did do a good job of making the lenses scratch-proof, oil-proof, and waterproof, but it doesn't mean that you won't damage them some way later on. My third and last issue is that when the lenses are on the camera, the camera gimbal cannot completely close off when you shut down the camera. This is an issue because the lens is going to stay exposed and if you put it inside your pocket, there's more risk of, let's say, damaging it or dropping it or something like that. So there's just more risk of losing this filter or breaking it in the end, which is a little bit annoying. I'm not really scared while the lens is on the camera. It's really solid with the magnets on there, but it is certainly an issue once you close off the camera and then you move it around where it could fall off more easily. I hope this video helped you understand all the different filters that Freewell offers for the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and when they might be useful for you when filming some videos. If you're interested in buying any of them, go check out my field links down in the description below. I'm also going to have a page on my website where I have a lot more of the options available for these filters, so definitely go check them out if you're interested to get any of them. They really can help get more scenario results inside of your videos. If you enjoyed this video, please let me know by hitting the like button below and definitely subscribe for more content on photography and filmmaking. See you in the next one! [Music]
What is this video about?
I just finished testing the complete Freewell filter lineup for the DJI Pocket 3 and 4, and I want to walk you through what each filter does, when you actually need it, and what the trade-offs are.
The first filters I tested were the mist filters—the Snow Mist and Glow Mist. These are specialty tools. They soften your image and reduce harsh details, which can look nice for vlogging or when you want a dreamier aesthetic. The 1/4 strength is quite strong; the 1/8 is more subtle. I don't think you need to use them every time, but they have their moment. The main thing I learned testing them outside in the snow is to bring a cloth—these filters get dirty and fogged easily in demanding conditions.
The real workhorse filters are the ND filters. I tested seven of them: ND8, ND16, ND32, ND64, ND128, ND256, and ND1000. These are essential if you want cinematic motion blur in your footage. The rule is simple—the 180-degree shutter speed rule. If you're shooting 24fps, you want a 1/50th shutter speed. That forces you into overexposure during the day, which is where ND filters come in. They act like sunglasses for your sensor. I was impressed that Freewell included ND128 and ND256 options—those in-between strengths are genuinely useful on bright sunny days when ND64 isn't quite enough and ND1000 is overkill.
I compared the filters side by side for color cast, vignetting, and sharpness. The ND8 through ND64 all performed really well with minimal color shift and no corner darkening. The ND1000 showed some blue color cast, slightly softer details, and some vignetting in the corners—but that's the trade-off for that much light reduction. Overall, Freewell's quality is solid for the price point.
Then there are the CPL filters. I tested a clear CPL and four ND+CPL combinations. CPL filters remove glare and reflections (great for shooting screens), boost blue skies, and intensify landscape colors. The downside is they introduce a slight green-yellow cast, and they're useless for night video or sunsets, where they'll actually make your footage duller. Freewell's detail of marking the max polarization point is a smart touch—you just align it instead of guessing.
A few practical issues: the kit is expensive ($289, though on sale for $150 currently). The filters are easy to drop because the magnet pull is so strong. And when they're mounted, the gimbal can't fully close, which means more exposure and risk if you're moving the camera around.
If you're serious about getting better-looking footage from your Pocket 3 or 4, these filters genuinely help. You don't need all of them—I'd prioritize a couple of ND filters for cinematic motion blur and a CPL for bright outdoor days. Start there and add others as you discover what you actually use.