What filters

[Dave Saunders]

Having got together some decent lenses, I don't want to be putting a rubbish filter in front. I'm only really interested in ND filters and a couple of coloured for B/W.
What do I go for....Lee, Cokin, Kodak..... Glass. Polyester, resin??

Can any one recommend what filters to use?

[lenser]

I've been pleased with all my Cokins. Others on here have said very good things about the Lee system.

Tim

[Brian Ellis]

I don't think there are any "rubbish" filters among the major brands. I've used the Lee system and B+W, Heliopan, Tiffen, and Hoya circular glass filters. All work fine as long as you keep them clean and free of scratches. I've bought B+W mainly because they have a quality "feel" to them but I don't honestly think photographs made with them are going to look any different than other less expensive brands.

[Joanna Carter]

Don't omit to consider Hitech filters from Formatt Filters http://www.formatt.co.uk/. They do resin filters for a good price but they also do very high quality glass filters if you want to spend more ;)

[Ron Marshall]

Hoya, Heliopan or B+W, multicoated. I've used all and happy with them.

[Ralph Barker]

Gel, polyester, and resin require a bit more care than glass to avoid scratches, but not unreasonably so.

Among the glass, screw-in filters, it may be difficult to tell the difference in glass quality, but the less-expensive brands often use aluminum rings, rather than brass. The aluminum variety are more likely to "seize" on the lens. Multi-coated, as mentioned, are better in flare-prone situations.

[anchored]

You might consider adding a polarizer to your list of gotta-have filters... Very helpful and most useful filter short of perhaps a yellow filter for B&W.

There are indeed lots of rubbish filters on the market, especially when it comes to polarizers. Be sure whatever brand you decide on is made of optical quality materials and are multicoated to maintain the best of image quality. I would personally suggest staying away from Hoya (except for HMC), Quantaray, SunPak, and any "no-name" filter such as frequently seen on eBay. Effects of these filters can be very detrimental to image quality, especially on their polarizers.

Brands: I personally use Lee, Singh-Ray, and HiTech filters... all made of optical resin. One reason for this choice of brands are they are square or rectangular (I use the Lee holders). Other excellent brands: Heliopan, B+W, Nikon. Cokin makes some interesting effects filters, but their ND's are not neutral in color (and are labelled as Gray Gradiants... so they're being honest).

On the ND's, Heliopan's are known to be the most neutral of colors of any filter. Their polarizers also have a wider range of effect of any others (Lee also has a very wide range of polarity).

[Ben Chase]

Having got together some decent lenses, I don't want to be putting a rubbish filter in front. I'm only really interested in ND filters and a couple of coloured for B/W.
What do I go for....Lee, Cokin, Kodak..... Glass. Polyester, resin??

Can any one recommend what filters to use?

I have used Singh-Ray, Lee, and Heliopan filters. A long time ago I used polyester filters, but they are so prone to scratching with use that I started using resin filters afterward. It is true that you can take extra care of the poly filters, but it is nearly inevitable over time that you will have scratches. I have Singh-Ray filters that are over 4 years old that you can barely distinguish from brand new. That said, I believe personally that either resin or glass is the way to go.

I would recommend both Singh-Ray and Lee for ND filters, and Heliopan for the colored filters based on my own personal experiences.

[Brian Ellis]

Anchored said: " . . . Be sure whatever brand you decide on is made of optical quality materials and are multicoated to maintain the best of image quality. I would personally suggest staying away from Hoya (except for HMC) . . . "

Just curious about your basis for these statements. What's supposed to be wrong with Hoyas and with filters that aren't multi-coated? I've used non-multicoated Hoyas (along with B+W, Heliopan, and Tiffen) for years and they've always seemed fine to me. John Sexton uses uncoated Tiffens exclusively (or at least he did when I last took one of his workshops, about five years ago) and he seems to do o.k. with them.

[anchored]

My basis for my statement about using optical quality materials mainly due to experience (37-years shooting landscapes with color film and heavy use of filters), and what I feel is sound logic... why would one use a high-grade optical lens and then shoot through non-optical piece of plastic or glass... and not expect some degradation of image?

Non-coated filters are more prone to lens flare (as are non-coated camera lenses), imparting color aberrations, and causing distortions (since they're non-optical). On polarizing filters, where the differences between cheap filters (Hoya non-coated and Tiffens and Quantarays and SunPaks and non-brands) and good filters really stands out, the cheap ones causes loss of contrast, makes shadows go bluish, modifies colors, and provides very limited range of polarity. The reason the above brands are mentioned: I've tried them all, and with the exception of a Hoya HMC polarizer, they've all been discarded.

If you (or John or whoever) is happy with Tiffens and non-coated filters, then that's all well and good. But... if one would compare the difference in quality of image between a $20 non-coated Hoya and a $300 Lee or Singh-Ray or Heliopan etc., there's very big differences easily seen (especially with polarizers).

[Maris Rusis]

It's amazing what works sometimes. Instead of buying resin filters for my Cokin P filter holder I went down to the local plastic fabricators shop and bought perspex off-cuts. Wow, what colours! Red, blue, green, fluoro-pop yellow, fluoro-pop green, purple, orange. The whole stack cost $20.

When I got the offcuts home I cut them into 84mm squares with a hacksaw and after peeling off the cover paper found they fit the Cokin P holder nicely. A few shooting tests gave me the filter factors so now I have about 50 filters, some nice, some yucky, all interesting, for cheap.

How good are they optically? To test this I hung a yellow sample over the front of my 90mm astronomical telescope and checked out Saturn. I could resolve the Cassini division in the rings and that gap is less than 1 second of arc wide so the yellow perspex could not have been too bad. Frankly I'm surprised by the optical quality of commercial grade perspex.

[Carsten Wolff]

Bloody Australians... always have that "who gives a...." attitude, don't they? ;) (Although "Maris" is not the most common name in Tewantin, I guess, so maybe first generation Aussie).