A few months ago I was lucky enough to receive the new Formatt Hitech 85mm Firecrest Holder.

The Firecrest 85mm ND Starter Kit comprises the following:

• Firecrest 85mm holder with polariser control wheel
• 77mm Firecrest circular polariser
• CPL rotates using the unique geared system within the holder
• 77mm, 72mm, 67mm, 58mm Step Rings
• Luxury pouch
• Firecrest ND 1.8 85x85mm (6 stops)
• Firecrest GND 0.9 85x110mm (3 Stops)

I also added in the Firecrest 3.0 85x85mm (10 stops) filter as I knew I would be wanting to do some slightly longer exposures with the setup.

The kit came in at £250 minus the 10% discount by using my DIBSM10 code and the 10 stop filter was a further £80. 

That as a setup is you good to go for quite a few varying shots, coastal sunrise/set, daytime shooting, mountains, city/urban landscapes and many other styles of shooting.

For me for the 1st few goes on it, I took it out to the coast for a few shots, one trip out was as overcast as it could be, but the second was rather nice.

Using the holder is great, the adapter rings, poloriser and holder all fit into one pouch and the filters into another. Then when it comes to assembling it, it took me a mere 30 seconds and the holder is as snug as it gets one you do up the locking nuts.

There are 2 slots for filters, so you can have 2 grad filters or a grad and an ND of your choice.

The nicest thing for me though was the size of the unit, it takes up a lot less space in my kit bag than the 100mm holder as obviously it is smaller, but everything is smaller. The cases, the filters, the adapter rings, so you save space all around with this.

On all the FujiFilm lens I shot with I had no Vignette at all. This was from the 10-24mm, the 16-55mm and the 50-140mm.

What was also quite noticeable was the grads transition seemed to be smaller on the 85mm soft grad, so with this in mind it would not cover as much of the image whole as it is better suited to the smaller sensor. So for where the effect starts and stops I feel this is going to work a lot better for my image making on upcoming shoots. Another consideration is that this holder is smaller and a smaller holder has less chance of catching the wind on those not so nice day, making images sharper and those harder conditions to shoot in that little bit easier.