Are These Artifacts Of Some Sort? How to Solve This?

[Jeremy Z]

This is kind of a purist attitude, but I will just put it out there.

When I quoted about cheap glass in front of expensive glass, even a good, multicoated UV filter is cheap compared to a lens. When I used them, I used multicoated UV filters.

Multicoating helps reduce flare and minimizes the amount of light that is lost. But for each piece of glass light goes through, a certain amount of light is lost.

I agree that using a hood is the best solution, when you're not using a flash.

Do they still make those collapsible rubber hoods? The ones that screw into the filter threads and kind of fold down? My grandpa had a few of them from the 70s, but I haven't seen one in a while.

 

[cgipson1]

Do they still make those collapsible rubber hoods? The ones that screw into the filter threads and kind of fold down? My grandpa had a few of them from the 70s, but I haven't seen one in a while.

They still make them.. I bought one 77mm rubber hood to test with since it will fit the majority of my lenses... but I decided not to use it due to vignetting on the wider side of all of my zooms. Not to mention that the soft hood doesn't offer much protection compared to the hard plastic ones.

 

[KmH]

I think the rubber hoods offer better impact protection than a hard plastic hood, because the force is usually dissipated over a longer period of time.

 

[analog.universe]

When I quoted about cheap glass in front of expensive glass, even a good, multicoated UV filter is cheap compared to a lens.

I need to disagree here. Yes, every piece of glass is transmission lost, certainly. However, companies like Heliopan and B+W use the same Schott glass and the same coating techniques as lens makers like Zeiss. Actually Zeiss even makes UV filters now... Adding one more thin piece of glass (of the same composition) to a system that already has 13 or 17 elements or whatever, is negligible in my opinion. And in side by side shots that I've taken with my own equipment, the filter is pretty much imperceptible to the human eye unless you're really making an effort to create some flare. (in those situations you just take the filter off anyway) I tested with Heliopan SH-PMC's and B+W XS-Pro Nano's, they both performed so well I just don't worry about them until I see flare when I'm shooting. (Like .5% of my shots, street lights at night with wide angle lenses, etc...) How a lens reacts to a filter also depends on the lens itself. My Tokina 11-16 likes to flare, with or without a filter, so the filter does make it worse. My Canon 24L II basically never flares, even with a filter.