Originally posted by Muggins Haha... Interesting thought, but I find that when I'm out touring around taking pictures, I usually have the hood on (mostly for protection, and flare) but I'm lazy enough that the lens cap stays in my pocket
. I know that 99.9% of the time, the hood will be enough protection, but it's that one time some lady bangs against me with the metal buckle on her purse or something of that nature. Not expecting the filter to stop a bullet or anything.
But I do wonder - does a filter really add to the damage for anything more than scratches? For a proper impact that is?
People can come up with all sorts of scenarios where a filter will save a lens, but the truth is, they won't do much good in most of the common mishaps. Let's face it, if you drop a lens, the filter might save the front element from damage, but the focus helicoid is going to be wrecked and the optical block will likely need replacing anyway. New lenses aren't particularly robustly built.
I've been shooting for close to 40 years, I gave up on "protective" filters over 30 years ago and have yet to damage a lens in any way that a filter would have prevented.
I shot a lot of B&W (almost all of my film work was B&W), so I had some sort of filter on pretty much all the time, but I have yet to damage a filter either.
"Protective" filters really are proof that PT Barnum was right.