UV filters.

Stefan - I never make assumptions - that's dangerous

Okay okay
I wasn't clear.

You said this:
Since my English isn't native and I might not be able to catch everything I'm under the impression you're saying here with the words "it was most unfortunate and there was no filter on" that you made the assumption that a filter would have make a difference in your story.

Basically all you can do is make assumptions because you can't retest it under precisely the same conditions so you can't know if an filter would have make a difference or not.

The rest is already said in my other comments, I hope it's clear what I'm trying to say

Stefan

open mouth - allow teeth to leave go of topic

Now relax

You're the one going on about it, I'm just trying to make myself be understood
Yeah lets move on

I have UV filters on most of my lenses.

Saves me messing with lens caps, and the camera's always ready.

Even if I haven't wiped the fingerprints off, at least I don't miss the shot when I bring the camera up to my eye and realise that I've forgotten to take the cap off (again).

Good grief you'll leave the front element of the lens unprotected gathering crud etc. rather than take 3 seconds to clip the lens cap on? To me it's crackers to spend loads on a lens and then in any way compromise its performance which was the reason paid all that money.

If the lens is on the camera mostly the cap is off and the hood on offering some protection so I suspect our working practice differs.

But that is clearly my problem. Obsessive compulsive? Me? Maybe!

Mike

With the 'stress' this post is raising it could be better to consider it closed, every one seems to 'do their own thing'

Certainly opened a can of worms...........

I don't see why. IMO there are too many knee-jerk calls (largely not acted upon by the mods, I'm glad to say) to close threads these days as soon as a discussion becomes less than completely anodyne. It's mostly a perfectly mature discussion, and I'm not aware of much stress.

Each to his own, which is fine. Why would I be offended if someone thinks I'm crackers? Maybe I am

Well, when the camera's out of the bag, and somewhere I might want to use it at short notice, yes. Touch wood, I seem to be successful in not bashing the camera about - and for the most part even fingerprints on the filter are rare.

That is a point, of course. I keep meaning to have a careful look at whether there's much difference with and without filters. I was quite interested in someone's observation that AF seemed faster without them.

I probably don't use the hood enough - something else to look into in terms of IQ.

Not at all. As I say, each to his own.

I dropped, actually thats too strong a word, a lens rolled off the top of my camera bag and fell eight inches onto a thickly carpeted floor and the filter smashed all over the front element scratching it. The filter caused the damage. I now only use them when necessary. BTW ALL my filters are SMC Pentax ones.

I used UV filters on all my lenses up to a few years ago, the arguments on this forum for and against helped me make the decision to remove them, and after seeing that video link posted by Stefan I am now even more convinced to leave them off, if anyone would care to repeat the test with a DA* lens and let me know the results I would be most appreciative

Now does anyone know a good way to get worms back into a can:

I use a lens hood all the time.

On a very bright day, just look at a bright distant scene, then see how much easier it is to see if you shield your eyes with your hand or step into the shadow of a tree or building.

Your lenses feel the same way.

I was told that if the lens came with a hood - then the makers intended it to be used with said hood out of doors

Actually, for a long time I have used the Pentax dedicated hoods even in the days we had to buy then separately. This was mainly because they clipped on instead of having to mess about screwing and unscrewing them.

Using a hood is far more important than using a filter. If we use a filter that's a reflective glass surface too far forwards to be effectively shielded by the hood.

Not sure this is really the right analogy.

What you're actually doing when you shield your eyes like that is cutting out a bright part of the actual field of view, so that your pupils can open up more to 'expose' for the part of the scene you want to look at (in the centre, because of the way we look at things).

More like spot metering (or perhaps centre-weighted), rather than matrix.

Whereas a hood, by definition (since it shouldn't cause vignetting) is cutting out light from outside the field of view.

Certainly I've prevented flare on many occasions, using a hood, or even a hand, when shooting into the sun, with the sun outside the field of view. But a hood doesn't help at all if the sun is actually in the picture.

As I say, I probably should use a hood more often.

What you are doing in the analogy is cutting out the bright sky so you can see the view more clearly. This is what the lens hood does. I know it's not exactly the same, but it does illustrate the advantage of shielding.

In a similar way we might use the visor in our cars.

It would be interesting to make an eye hood that did not encroach on our field of view to see if it had any effect, but we have such wide angle eyes it probably wouldn't help much!