Reviews |Kase Wolverine Armour System Review

Kase Wolverine Armour System Review

Kase Wolverine Armour Kit
Review

Price when reviewed

£280

$309.38
Check current price

Our Verdict

Kase Wolverine Armour System is well thought and constructed. It doesn’t take up much space in your bag nor add significantly to the load, but it makes using filter very easy. The filter holder practically jumps out of your grasp onto the magnetic adapter, and it feels very secure on the lens. The circular polarising filter and rectangular filters also attach well yet are easy to adjust. Plus you get the excellent optical quality of Kase’s Wolverine glass in the filters.

For

  • Slim, lightweight and robust construction
  • Easy magnetic mounting of filters
  • Reduced risk of getting fingerprints on the filters

Against

  • Expensive
  • Filter frames required for every 100mm filter you use
  • Rear mounting a filter means popping off the holder to remove it

What is the Kase Wolverine Armour System?

At the heart of the Kase Armour System (also known as the Kase Wolverine Armour System) is a slimline filter holder made from metal alloy. This is compatible with a 95mm rear-mounting magnetic circulate polariser (CPL), Kase Armour magnetic circular neutral density filters and magnetic frames that encase rectangular or square filters.

The frames enable existing Kase Wolverine 100mm filters to be used with the Kase Wolverine Armour holder.

Kase Wolverine Armour Holder Kit price and availability

The Kase Wolverine Armour 100m magnetic filter holder kit retails for $309.38/£280. The kit includes the holder with a 95mm CPL, 77mm and 82mm magnetic adapters, adapter cap, 67mm and 72mm step rings plus a 100x100mm magnetic frame and a 100x150mm magnetic frame.

The magnetic frames retail for $59.95/£42 while a 95mm circular ND filter is $130/£130. The neutral density filters are available as ND8, ND64 and ND1000.

Kase also sells the Armour Holder filter by itself for $149/£149.

Specification

  • Product type: Filter system
  • Compatible with: Kase 95mm Armour circular magnetic filters, 100mm-type filters in Kase filter frames
  • Holder material: Aluminium alloy

Features

The Kase Wolverine Armour Holder Kit gives you everything you need to start using the Kase Armour system on lenses with filter threads of 67mm, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm. Additional step rings will extend the range of lens that can be used with the kit but the maximum filter thread size is 82mm.

There’s also a Kase Armour Entry Kit and a Kase Armour Master Kit, these include everything in the starter kit plus some additional filters and a case.

The Kase Armour Holder is designed to be used with the Kase Armour Magnetic 95mm circular polariser, 95mm Armour Magnetic Circular ND filters and Kase Wolverine 100mm filters mounted in a magnetic frame. The filters use the same Wolverine glass as is in Kase other Wolverine filters.

The Kase Armour Magnetic filter frames are available separately in 100x100mm and 150x100mm sizes to house Kase’s 100mm system 2mm-thick square and rectangular filters. They are also compatible with third-party filters of the same dimensions.

Build and handling

Although it’s made from metal alloy, Kase’s Armour filter holder is lightweight. Its black anodised finish looks and feels great. However, I noticed that the black coating starts to rub off some of the corners after a bit of use. Overall, however, it is well-made.

The first step in using the Kase Wolverine Armour System is to attach the appropriate magnetic adapter ring or magnetic adapter ring and step ring to your lens. With the correct adapter and rings attached to the lens, it’s now possible to mount the holder.

The magnetic attraction between the Kase Armour filter holder and the magnetic rings is impressively strong. It means the holder snaps quickly into position. It also means that you can’t put the holder on the wrong way around.

If you try to pull the filter holder off the lens, you’ll discover that there’s a small catch that needs to be pulled back before it comes away. That said, if you lift the holder up from the corner opposite the catch, it can be removed without pulling back the catch.

Conveniently, this catch doesn’t need to be released to mount the holder, only to remove it.

With the Armour filter holder in position, you can fit a 95mm circular Armour filter. This could be the Armour circular polariser (CPL) or an ND filter. These filters are also magnetic and one fits perfectly in a dedicated circular recess in the holder. Again, as it uses magnetic attraction, it can only be put in one way around and it snaps in neatly.

Two semi-circular wells on opposite corners of the holder allow enough space for fingers to grasp the CPL (or other 95mm filter) and remove it from the holder.

 

If you want to use the CPL and a Kase Armour Magnetic Circular ND filter, the CPL should be mounted on the back of the filter holder (there’s a second circular recess) so that the ND filter can snap into the front-facing recess.

Kase Wolverine Armour 100mm magnetic filter system announced

As with the Kase K9 Filter Holder, there’s a small red metal cog on one side of the holder that engages with a ring inside the holder to enable the CPL to be rotated without touching the filter itself. If there are front and rear-mounted filters, they both rotate but that’s only of significance to the polariser.

Kase sells rectangular filters with a frame pre-installed, but the frames can also be retro-fitted to existing filters and it’s just a case of tightening a few screws. This is easy enough to do but it’s something that needs to done in good light on a clear table, it’s not something you’ll want to do out in the field.

Also, I found the frame screws near impossible to unscrew once they are nice and tight, so it’s important to ensure you have frames for all the filters that you intend to use.

 

Once they are mounted in a magnetic filter frame, square and rectangular filter snap into position on the holder between the guides on either side. The transition in a graduated filter can be shifted simply by pushing the filter up or down in the holder. Once you’re happy with it’s location, tightening the screw on the opposite side of the holder from the CPL rotating wheel, keeps it in position securely.

Performance

Thanks to the strength of the magnets used, the Kase Wolverine Armour holder is very easy to fit on an adapter ring and it’s held securely. One thing the bear in mind, however, is that if a rectangular filter is in the holder, it’s fairly easy to remove the holder from the lens if you forget to loosen the locking screw before lifting the filter. Thankfully, the consequences of this aren’t major as the holder stays fixed to any filters attached to it – including the circular polariser.

I found that the rectangular filters have a little wriggle room inside the filter frames and it’s possible to see a thin gap at one or the other, but in practice this doesn’t cause any issues.

If you’ve never used square or rectangular filters in frames, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Even though the frames are narrow, it makes the filters easier to handle and there’s decreased chance of getting fingerprints on the glass. It also maximises the usable area of the filter, enabling it to be used with lenses as wide as 14mm. The shortest full-frame lens I have access to currently is 17mm at its widest point and there are no issues with vignetting when I used the Kase Wolverine Armour System on it.

Kase neutral density filters are very good and I’ve not seen any drop in the detail level recorded by the 61MP Sony A7R IV when I use them. The Kase Wolverine 100mm ND1000 is also very close to neutral and it cuts the claimed 10EV of light to extend the shutter speed by 10 stops.

Verdict

The Kase Wolverine Armour system is an excellent filter system that combines circular and square or rectangular filters well, with magnetism giving an easy mounting solution. The holder is very slim and nicely made, feeling lightweight yet robust. It also snaps onto a lens smartly and feels secure.

It’s great to be able to adjust the degree of polarisation without touching the filter itself and when other filters are stacked on top.

Another plus of the Armour system is that it uses Kase’s excellent Wolverine glass in the filters, which consequently deliver high quality results with plenty of detail, very close to neutral colours and accurate exposure control.