Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad Review

A graduated neutral density filter is (usually) a rectangular lens filter that is clear at one end and neutral grey at the other. The grey section is positioned over the bright part of the image – usually the sky in a landscape – to reduce the brightness of that part of the scene and to balance the exposure across the image. Often referred to as ND grads, graduated neutral density filters are a standard accessory for landscape photography.

Although ND grads have been around forever, Kase has developed the concept by creating a filter with two different types of gradation, one at either end of the filter.

Currently, Kase offers two types of the double grad, the Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad 0.9 GND Medium & Reverse and the Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad 0.9 GND Soft & Hard. While the Medium grad of the Double Grad 0.9 GND Medium & Reverse is useful for a wide range of landscape photography, the Reverse ND is useful for sunset and sunrise – those times when you want to reduce the brightness of the sky, but the brightest part is close to the horizon.

The Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad 0.9 GND Soft & Hard gives the same strength and type of filter at either end but the gradation is abrupt at the hard end and very gradual at the soft end. A hard ND grad filter is especially useful with seascapes or where there’s an even horizon. Conversely, a soft ND is handy when objects such as trees, buildings or mountains extend into the sky. It enables the sky to be darkened without an obvious transition from light to dark in the trees etc.

As the Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm filters are rectangular, they are designed to be used with the Kase K9 Filter Holder. This has slots to hold the filters and they can be slid up or down to position the graduation across the correct part of the scene in the viewfinder.

I tested the Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad 0.9 GND Medium & Reverse but in the absence of a Kase K9 holder, I used it in a Lee Filters Lee100 holder. It slid in easy and stayed put, despite me carrying the camera on a strap across my body with the filter in place. It only slipped out on one occasion, when I’d pushed the filter to the outer edge of the front element of the lens and I jolted the camera on the strap.

While the two ends of the filter may look quite similar at first glance, careful examination reveals their difference with the reverse filter having a less-dense section towards the edge of the glass. Kase also labels each end of the filter to be on the safe side.

With Kase’s standard ND grads, the dark part of the filter extends approximately half-way down the filter with different degrees of graduation. This means that there’s plenty of clear filter as well as the ND part. With the Double Grads, however, each ND section is narrower and there’s a slimmer band of clear filter.

This means that you need to be doubly careful with the positioning of the filter, but actually, in real-world photography, that’s not a problem. I used the Kase Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad 0.9 GND Medium & Reverse with the Nikon Z7 II and the Nikon Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/4 S, and even at the 24mm end, it was easy to position the filter correctly.

With the camera flipped to portrait orientation and the filter rotated accordingly, you have to be a little more careful still as it’s easy for the top of the opposite gradation to sneak into the bottom of your image. However, it’s just a case of pushing the filter down a bit further than you might be used to.

Wanting to check how the filter performs with an ultra-wide lens, I mounted it on a Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 USM on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. Again, I had no problem with landscape-orientation images, and for the most part it was fine in portrait orientation, but if you only need a tiny slither of the ND filter, you may find the other filter effect appearing on the opposite side. However, it’s unlikely to be an issue for most photography.

Kase uses high-quality glass for the Wolverine 100 X 150mm Double Grad filters and the image quality and detail resolution remains high. Importantly for a neutral density filter, the ND section is also neutral so there’s no obvious colour cast.

The filters are also easy to clean, however, after dropping my review sample onto gravel from a height of around 4-feet, I suggest you avoid doing that. Happily, the filter survived being dropped onto grass and a wooden floor.