buying a circular polarizer!

This whole filter business is starting to frustrate me. I am finding a large variance in price for what seems to be the same filter. For example on Amazon they have 77mm Hoya multicoated thin circular polarizer filters on sale for about $75, go to Adorama and Hoya 77mm multicoated circular polarizer is being sold for $156...and I can't tell what the difference is.
Hoya filters all over the web with the same title are being sold between 50-180 dollars...and than there is the multicoated filters with "Pro1" attached to the title, they are still just multicoated but now they are sold for over $200. I can't find any answers, can you?
 
I would be glad to test before I purchase but that is not an option for me. Anchorage, Alaska does not have much for photography stores.
 
I agree... In general I imagine you get what you pay for, but the large price variability among seemingly similar or identical filters and the potential for 'features' just being meaningless marketing hype makes it seem like a crapshoot.
 
That's not my understanding.

The thin/slim filters for WA lenses do not have female threads on the front, thereby making unable to double-stack from the front. You can place the thin/slim as the last filter in a stack, but that is unwise with WA lenses due to inherent vignetting with standard filters plus adding another. That's why the thin/slim filter was introduced for WA lenses. The next best option would be a filter holder for rectangular filters. (Cokin, Lee, Singh-Ray to name a few)
My Tokina 11-16 works fine with standard thickness filters. So does the Nikon 12-24, and a bunch of others. Most of the time you don't need the slim filters if you're just using a single filter. WA lenses are obviously going to be more prone to filter vignetting, but there is no "inherent" vignetting on WA lenses when using standard thickness filters. That's implying that all of them vignette unless you're using a slim, which just isn't true.
 

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