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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-01-2011, 08:19 AM
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I no longer leave a filter permanently on my lenses. I have noticed a difference in IQ between shots with and without. Most of the filters I was using fall into the cheaper category. Mostly, I was using the Quantaray filters I bought at Ritz when they were still open. They are made by Tiffen. There are conditions where a protective filter has it's place. I am replacing my cheap filters with better ones for those times where I need one. From what I have read, blocking UV light isn't necessary with digital cameras as it was with film. From my own experience, I found I was getting far more of that green flare with the filter.
My biggest bad experience with a filter involved a 58mm Tiffen I got for a Sigma 70-300 lens. The lens came with the deal I got with my K10D. I had always used a skylight or UV filter on my lenses in the film days because I was told long ago it was necessary. I quickly came to the opinion that the Sigma was a crappy lens. Most of the images were slightly soft no matter what f stop I used. I was looking for another lens. On advice I got from a thread here in the forum a couple of years ago, I took the filter off. It was like I had a brand new lens! While I admit it's not in the quality of more expensive zooms, the Tiffen filter I was using made the lens worse, almost to the point of being unusable. That day, I took the filter off every lens I owned. I do on occasion use a filter for protection, such as the motorcycle ice racing I shot recently where I was constantly being hit with ice and other debris when the wind kicked up.
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