Ah well, in that case I'd agree. That's a bit naughty of them really.

The thing is, if the real, as opposed to the imagined, risk was anything like as great as you fear, there would be huge numbers of cameras going back to be sorted out as a result of failed firmware installations.

They would never have it as a user-updateable feature if the likelihood of it going wrong was high. Doubtless there are a few muppets out there that use an almost empty battery, or switch it off half way through, or whatever, but they must be rare.

Most such muppets would probably never even know that there was firmware there to be updated.

Simple. If it leaves the factory before the latest version is released, it cannot have the latest version on it when you buy it.

You don't think retailers are going to take each one out of the box and do it, surely?

Au contraire... when all those other costs are high, it's the ideal time to buy stuff you want.

It's such a small proportion of the total that it just disappears in the noise.

You should buy Mike's, John

But notice, chaps... you've now also felt strongly enough about an aspect of the culture here (rather than the photographic content), to take the trouble to express an opinion.

Not 100% sure, but it does appear that if I load an image into the utility, it comes in with the same settings for contrast, sharpness etc as the camera is set to.

So I expect that if you develop it to JPG without any additional changes, it would be as you say.

Just as with the levels control in PhotoShop, whether you move the sliders in to boost the brights and darken the darks is entirely down to you - if enhancing the contrast like that is what you want, then fine, but it shouldn't be a default action regardless of the content.

There are plenty of low contrast images that are supposed to be that way.

I agree.

Even within the constraints of "we don't discuss moderation decisions", it would seem less arbitrary and capricious to at least give a reason, even if no further discussion was entered into.

They don't have to, but it would be nice if they did.

As far as

goes, there is none. It goes with the territory - we're here as guests, not by right.

Mmmm... perhaps, for the top two filters in the line up. For the ones at the bottom they're a lot worse.

It's incredibly marginal, even with a 100% crop. In real world photographs you'd be hard pressed to see a difference.

I think the most useful thing about this sort of test is that it does seem to confirm that good quality UV filters don't make the image worse.

I do use UV filters myself - but only because I prefer to get fingerprints off a filter than the lens

Not sure that either of the tests at those links confirm an improvement in image quality with the filter.

They look at the transmission of visible light, and the opacity to UV, and draw conclusions about which filters let through the most of the former, and the least of the latter. They also comment on the amount of vignetting caused by having the filter on at all, and show that flare isn't significantly worse with the best filters.

But looking at the actual images, I can't see any difference in quality between them.

It's also a little unfortunate that the manufacturer that comes out worst in the Lenstip article is the one you say you get such good results from

Where I would agree is that I've never seen any good evidence that suggests that a good quality UV filter makes for worse images.

And I do agree that this is very likely to be true, albeit impossible to test