Formatt Hitech Firecrest Ultra Cinema ND filters review.

The Formatt Hitech Firecrest Ultra filters cinema ND filters are constantly being improved upon and right now we are on version three of their Ultra filter range. So even that amazing Ultra filter you bought two or three years ago now has already been improved on and possibly even twice since then. Yes not many people know that but they keep improving their range.It’s one of the reasons I love their products they just don’t produce a good filter and wait for people to buy them they keep pushing the envelope and stretching the boundaries of what’s possible with a filter which in turn helps us create the best content we can.

So why buy Formatt Hitech Ultra cinema ND filters?

That might seem like a hard question to answer but once you know exactly how these filters are made then I think you will agree it’s easy to see why you should buy them.

Now before anyone says a filter is JUST a filter after-all they are just tinted glass… can I say oh how very wrong you are and that’s a bit like saying a camera is a camera and they are all the same. Why spend tens of thousands on equipment just to have a piece of glass ruin your over all image quality just so you could save 100 bucks it makes no sense really.

To understand filters there are two things we need to really look at when we talk about filters firstly and they are…

Colour Neutrality

Colour neutrality on the Ultra range of filters is simply amazing, the best compliment you can ever make to a filter is when you look at two sets of footage afterwards and you simply can’t see an difference in colour neutrality in the footage shot both with and without ND filters in place (other than the shutterspeed or Aperture of course). Of course any glass element introduces an absolutely minute colour tint and yes I mean minute in the same way as different lenses give slightly different colour characteristics so to say any ND filter is completely colour neutral is just incorrect but to the naked eye these filters are colour neutral so that’s a huge plus point.

Optical performance

Now again this might a bit of a strange one as most people think glass is glass, well it’s not that simple and these filters are made of optical grade schott glass and crazily they are made of two pieces of glass, yes you read that right there are actually two pieces of glass bonded together with the ND coating sandwiched in between the two plates (I am going to get back to that again further on in the post). Now this already makes these filters really good and while most companies would be ready to sell the filters the crazy people over at Formatt Hitech go one amazing step further the filters are lapped and polished so they are ground down to be as optically flat as possible. This interest in striving for fore perfection is what makes me such a huge fan of their filters.

Every little tiny hump and hollow that other filters are sold with as normal have now been smoothed out and make these filters the most optically perfect filters currently available. This not only helps improves image sharpness but critically helps prevent distortion in your footage. This passion for perfection is why Formatt Hitech ND filters are used on many blockbuster movies and high end productions.

They don’t just copy other brands they innovated, they improve and they do it all quietly without massive advertising budgets  instead they pour the money back into the products. 

available in a few different sizes and are 4mm thick but they are also bringing out a new selection of cinema ND filters in 2mm also.