Nikon’s 800mm F5.6 FL ED VR and 400mm F2.8 FL ED VR lenses earn the 'FL' in their names from the coating of fluorine applied to the lens elements. But what exactly is fluorine coating, and why is it important?
In this two-minute long video from Nikon Japan, the coating's repellent properties are demonstrated as various elements are dripped, drawn and painted onto the surface. Essentially, the fluorine coating turns the front element glass into a large hydrophobic surface. This makes it much easier to remove offending liquids from the lens.
It’s probably not that often permanent marker meets the front of the lens, but the coating prevents buildup of material on the glass, and makes it easier to clean without damaging the surface.
According to Nikon, this coating is also more 'peel resistant' than the coating applied by other manufacturers.
Wait, how is this relevant? I like to protect my lenses with quality filter (more expensive than cheap ones, but relatively cheap imo), the coating shouldn't help much for users who have filter in front?
Fluorine coating ??? This is the most aggressive chemical which exists. F2 gas attacks glass immediately so absolutely useless for coatings.
I think they mean fluoride (with a d) coatings which are salts. To avoid confusion:
Fluoride: a halide salt of metals in many cases alkaline (earth) metals such as sodium of potassium (NaF, KF). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride
Fluorite: Calcium fluoride (CaF2) an example of the abovementioned salts which is used in low-dispersion glasses in high-emd telephoto lenses and telescopes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorite
Pentax may have been doing something with coatings for years, but that does not mean to say that it has been doing the same thing as Nikon. At this point, we can't tell, since there is so little detail about what this coating is, only what it does. Certainly the coating is NOT fluorine, since fluorine is a highly reactive gas at ambient temperatures. It is a fluorine-BASED coating, and there are many different coating materials containing fluorine.
You watch the video and get the impression that this is a Nikon first technology. Then you read the comments below and learn that Pentax has been doing this for years.
Most welcome Huyzer! :) One day it will be you helping someone with FACTS and the information in Dpreview will be higher then the Disinformation that its now sometimes´:)
I could not agree more with you Huyzer!!! :D Hopefully in a far far distant but nice future the trolls will go to their greener pastures if there will be enough of us TRULY interested in facts and not EGOS or "my brand is better then urs»! ;)
To be clear: You mean since dirt/oil on long lenses doesn't show up in images the way dirt/oils on shorter lenses does, right?
But with shorter lenses there are usually front filter threads, which are unusual with big telezooms, meaning one can use a filter. So this kind of coating is more useful for long lenses, though I guess not useless for short lenses like a 35mm.
Yes, that's what I was thinking. You can really put a lot of rubbish on a long lens with no significant deterioration in IQ. Not the case with wide-angle.
With long lenses the hood is usually more than enough to protect from rain, so it's more an occasional cleaning convenience.
With wide-angle, the hood can be quite short plus filters are often undesirable because of flare issues. Sure, one does use them, circ pol for interiours, for instance, but landscape would usually use bracket filters for NDGrad which isn't going to be practical/useful for general protection duty.
I think better UV filters can be used on wide angle lenses--and in many case even help to suppress flair. (Example UV B+W MRC Nano filters really do help in many situations.)
no where did dpreview state that it's new to the industry. it's new to nikon, and the article mentions that other manufacturer's use flourine. pentax and canon are two.
I'm quite sure Pentax have done something like that before...the marker thing and that stuff... On an actual lens...! I was like noooo what are you doing!
Nikon's claim is not that they are first to apply liquid repellent coatings to lenses but that their coating is more durable and more adhesive than existing coatings.
It is very hard to understand exactly what this news article is promoting as there is insufficient information. Anti-reflective coatings are calcium and magnesium fluoride plus other components. Fluorite lenses are crystalline calcium fluoride and fluorine is a highly corrosive gas. Teflon is a polymer that contains fluorine atoms in its structure but it is translucent rather than transparent.
In general, I'm a little tired of the greed of both marketing - Nikon and Canon. Sometimes Sony and Pentax on them background look's good mother. Enough to hold the technology, I want to live now, not later! And even more so, I'm ready to pay for them!
I would like them to find an anti fungus coating, that issue is a real problem in tropical regions where every lens is for the trashcan within 3 years due to humidity. No dry cabinet stories please, that is not where the lens is when you take pictures.
It would be nice but the organic anti-fungals are light sensitive and won't retain their efficacy long whilst other materials are organometallics and pretty toxic. I doubt there's a long term solution other than keeping lenses 'dry'. My old Olympus lenses suffered from nasty fungal growth in a high humidity environment.
I think the problem is to keep the humidity away from the internal parts - once its get in there (and stays there because of the climate) - it is nearly impossible to avoid fungus. I am just wondering wether exposure to hard UV light now and then could help without damaging the lens.
Would it be possible to have your Lenses [Camera?] Irradiated at: 1) A Food-processing Plant, or 2) A Medical Equipment Plant that sterilizes with Gamma-rays?
S/wouldn't that stop any Fungus growth in a Lens just like it does with Bacteria in Food or Medical Products?
You'd need to repeat the process every 6 Months or so to be effective.
HTH I just now thought of this– I hope it's a good idea.
You're right, but you do not understand what I hinted at above - I, like many, I'm sure, just hurt for what I Nikon since my childhood, he positions himself if not the "first", the "second" exactly - so we buy this photo equipment. They divide the market consisting of us with you. Why so-called "third" or "fourth", in this case, do their job better? Maybe it applies to all in this case? My message had a deeper meaning - what they did "finally" - certainly great. It's not about that. Speech that "someone" lazy, crushed under a huge part of the market. Maybe you just have not thought about it? Have a "big family"? Bring into the house is the best - for example iPhone, not just the leader. They have something to buy us again and again each time. A here we already bought "advance" - we are dependent on purchased equipment! This is not from the charging connector of the phone. This equipment accumulated over the years. As the equivalent of our choice. Therefore, these companies should be the best in everything. We - not the flock.
Yes, as you've stated, SP is used even of low-cost recent Pentax lenses. I wonder if Nikkor is going to reserve their flourine lens coating only for their top-end glass?
Pentax introduced flourine coatings a long time ago. From DP Review News, May 2009 -- "The front surface of these lenses is treated with PENTAX-original SP (Super Protect) coating, which applies a special fluorine compound to the lens surface through a vapor deposition process. This SP coating not only effectively repels dust, water and grease, but it also makes it easy to wipe off fingerprints and cosmetics." I have both dusty/rainy hiking and rafting experience with a Pentax SP-coated lens and have yet to touch the front element with a lens cloth.
Pentax recently added entirely new High-Definition coatings to its Limited lens series, and has another coating called aero-bright on some of its 645 lenses. I'm not sure that any maker tops Pentax for lens coatings.
dpreview posted the video - which was a pretty cool video. canon has used the coating for the last 4+ years as well, and i don't see as many of them sniveling.
it's a new coating for nikkor lenses. what dpreview suggested / wrote was accurate.
It'll be interesting if Nikon starts applying this coating for other lenses. It makes sense here because the filter diameter is huge and people will just use the filter drop in instead.
You ever heard of teflon, t-fal, etc? Also a fluorocarbon. It may have been a problem to get the flourine layer to adhere properly to the surface of the glass element(s) without adding unwanted transmission properties.
My primary interest would be for underwater lenses.
Actual it'll be a polyfluorocarbon which, as you mention, is used as a 'non-stick' coating on frying pans etc because very little will adhere to it. Conversely it doesn't stick well to anything either so one wonders how long these coatings will last.
get off the name game doesn't matter who's first, just that we all get to use cool technology... could say the same about Nikon have higher iso first. so glad our canon friends can use that tech as well. But I guess the real question is nice for lens but how about extending that to our filters that are on the front lines.
No, Canon has had calcium fluorite lens elements lens elements, which provide more dispersion compensation than ED glass, but are also much harder to work with, which is why only Zeiss and Canon used them in camera lenses, but it seems Nikon has finally joined the party with the 400mm f/2.8.
Dirt-repellent coatings are certainly not new - see Zeiss' LotuTec or Leica's AquaDura as applied to binoculars. Apparently what Nikon is claiming as innovative is a new technology for applying the coating, not the coating itself.
the 8-15mm fisheye, the 70-300L, the 16-35/4L the 24-70 2.8 II the 300/400/500/600 II's all have Fluorine coatings - probably more do but that's what i know off the top of my head.
GREAT ! Normally I spend all my time painting the front lens of my big glasses! OK, It's a joke. I suppose that Fluorite is used to reduce the weight of the lenses. Probably is the time that Nikon restarting to talk about photography ...
Something I find interesting ... crud on the front element has less impact on the IQ than you could expect. IIRC, a blog article from Roger Cicala (LensRentals) had images with various amounts on the front element, and showed the resulting image. I think there was one with the front element seriously cracked.
I'm certainly not advocating being careless with your front element, but real fastidiousness with keeping it immaculate may be less than appropriate. It may be counter-productive to be wiping it too much.
If you shoot at large apertures and you don't have the sun in or around the frame, you're safe with scratches or dus. If you shoot at closed apertures, f8 and higher, or especially if you have the sun in the shot, you can be sure that those blemishes will show.
As someone who's tried to get sea spray off of a multi-coated filter, taking countless lens tissues and eclipse fluid...
...and who's had to try to clean elephant snot (or whatever it is that comes out of an elephant's nose) when it snorts a foot or two from your ultra-wide angle lens, depositing disgusting slime on the front element of a 17-35mm zoom...
I here and now demand that Nikon create a retrofitting service so I can replace the front element of the half-dozen lenses that I use the most.
I shoot a lot in bad weather, worry about the image first and gear last, and swore off UV filters long ago other than when I know I'm going to be in a lens coating risky situation, like shooting in the surf. Whatever fluorine coating adds to the cost of the lens, I'll sign up for, because it would give me back hours of time every year.
I have a friend whose 2 year old recoated one of his lenses with crayons and Sharpie marker who'd probably sign up for the coating too.
Dude, with a track history like that I think you might need to revisit the anti-filter stance. Protect your front elements with B+W MRC Nano filters and they'll repel anything nature can throw at it (Nikon's fancy-pants "fluorine" thing is no better than some filter coatings already on the market).
My emergency filters are a combo of b&w and hoya hmc thin, but they only go on the camera when needed for a dodgy shoot. I shoot into the light a lot, and even those filters add a reflective artifact to an image that wouldn't have one without them.
I am not going to buy another Nikon product until the company hand over the reigns and research to the posters at DP Review. It is obvious that Nikon have no idea what they are doing.
Even the very best glass has to obey the laws of physics. Every lens element added will take away quality. But we can't live without. In some cases we want to get rid of lets say, chromatic aberration so we ad another piece of glass. But it will not improve the quality of what you see. In the laws of physics a bigger aperture shoot give sharper images, but we all know due of the glass its does not. No, adding glass should not be done if not is necessary. Even the highest quality filters will take away even a little of sharpness. Pixelpeekers will notice.
Sorry, but you're wrong with the "never" claims, and proves you don't know much about using filters.
Really obviously, under some conditions, both good polarizers and UV filters improve the results from already very good lenses.
No, every filter claiming to do X doesn't.
Here's something interesting about light, history books like to claim that James Clerk Maxwell proved that light is the same as electromagnetic radiation.
He did no such thing, in an aside he said: "Since both light and electromagnetic radiation travel at the same speed, they're likely the same thing."
That's far from proving anything. So this thing about the laws of physics is kind of more than really limited. And when one checks the sources such claims are often wrong.
No, UV and Polarized filters do not improve quality. They are used to get different results. Light is a electromagnetic wave (radiation) and a photon (energy particles). Being a photon and passing through different density's will always, have a negative effect. This can be corrected by putting different lenses together but in the end it will not be as sharp as it should be. The different nm in light will shift slightly passing trough even the best glass. UV filters will take out the light under 380nm. Polarized filters will take out light that has a different speed and direction. Being reflected on surfaces like glass and water. So sometimes it is good to use filters, because it gives different results, but not better results in terms of quality.
I see you didn't bother to read what I wrote about James Clerk Maxwell. The physics "of what is" is much more complex than you think.
Indeed better filters often do improve performance--including things like clarity and sharpness. No, not in every situation.
And these kinds of improved results are pretty easy to see.
Beyond the philosophy of "what is": Leica, Zeiss, Olympus, Nikon, etc all put coatings on their lenses to improve optical performance, not just ease of cleaning, and these coatings are effectively on lens filters, so you can't have it both ways. Nor is it at all likely that only lens makers know how to make the right cofilters for their own lenses.
The only exceptions here are polarizers or ND-filter. Very special filters you rarely use. They don't improve the performance, they change the pictorial outcome.
Skylight filter or UV-filter are more than fluidly, they are superfluously. It doesn't matter if you see light as a wave or as a photon.
Some times, really often, those changed outcomes are improvements. Coatings (aka on-lens filters) vastly improve outcomes.
Sorry, digital processing after the fact really can't reproduce the effects of a decent UV filter.
If light were that easy to work with, then the results from Canikon lenses could easily be processed to look like photos taken with decent Leica or Zeiss lenses. Whereas it's not even possible to process a photo taken with an excellent Zeiss look like a photo taken with an excellent Leica.
***sigh*** Buy as many filters as you want and be happy with your "improved" performance.
Maybe it would be a good idea if you combine 5 or more filters. According to your statements the optical performance will get better and better. And who knows, maybe from 10 filters on the performance will be outstandig...
If it will make you happy, it's fine. Have a good time.
First there are of course optically better lenses and then optically not so great lenses. Both have coatings to filter the light, but clearly (well not sometimes) the best filtercoats aren't used on each and every lens.
As for filters someone mounts, lens makers can't account for every situation the lens will be used in. Different atmospheres inherently alter light, and therefore filters can offer great improvement.
0MitchAG: You would think so, wouldn't you? But that is not always the case. I shoot with Micro Four Thirds lenses, and one of the major manufacturers (Panasonic) does not coat its lenses to remove purple flare. A lot of people are using filters on the Panasonics to remove the flare, even using complicated mods on the 7-14, which doesn't normally take filters.
Also, I recently did a sharpness test with one of my Olympus lenses (the 75-300 II) and it was SHARPER with a B+W MCR Nano UV filter attached than it was with the filter removed!
Pallke: For a guy who said he was going to sign off several posts ago, you sure do a lot of talking. Theoretically, there is some merit to what you say. In practice, there isn't.
I don't believe that you've used filters extensively.
As to what you may or may not like, that's really up to you, but pretending that a lens' coating is absolutely the only filter that could possibly add anything positive to image quality more than suggests you shouldn't be taken seriously.
I too took: "If it will make you happy, it's fine. Have a good time." to be a sign off.
I've never used a filter unless I needed it to alter what was hitting the film or sensor. I have damaged exactly one lens (out of hundreds!) in 40+ years, and that I did by tossing it! Filters not necessary for an image capture may do nothing, may hurt the image, but they cannot help the image. Otherwise, which filter would you recommend for my Canon 600mm F4L? I think it needs to be 170mm or so in diameter.
I'm with Ken. Long ago, when I first bought an SLR, I had a concern about protection of the lenses...then after actual use I realized it wasn't as big of a deal as some make it out to be. I've also bought old Nikon Ai lenses that have had scratches on the front and it doesn't affect IQ at all.
But back when I didn't know what the hell I was doing, I probably thought people not using a UV filter or some such to protect their investment was a moron.
I use UV filters on my expensive glass, but not on my kit lenses. A few months ago, a filter saved the front element of a $600 lens. So that's pretty much justified all the coin I've ever spent on filters, and then some. The best thing about filters is that they keep the coatings on your front element pristine - worth it when the time comes to sell.
Canon has "a newly developed Fluorine coating that keeps soiling, smears and fingerprints to a minimum" on the 8-15 f4 L Fisheye. I just bought one, but i am not going to try it out it with water, mud, paint, markers...
Darn, I used to write down the location of a photo on the lens with a permanent marker. Well, at least, now I can save a plate when I like to have a salad with oil and vinegar dressing out in the field.
But on a serious note, the only test I would be interesting in would be salt water spray.
I'm a chemist by training and this doesn't make much sense to me. Fluorine is a gas so do they mean that fluorine gas has been passed over the glass to make a fluoride-glass in situ? I'm assuming that the fluoride-glass is the hydrophobic material they are talking about??? Cheers Kevin
Yeah, "fluorine" obviously can't be more than a few atoms in the molecular formula of the coating, but the photographic industry has been touting fluoride glass for decades. I'm guessing this is really a heavy-metal fluoride glass, although those generally are known for their LACK of durability and resistance to water... so maybe Nikon has some secret sauce?
Japanese marketing, to make a big deal about the least used feature on the least bought lenses. Yes lets make silly videos of how soy sauce just rolls off our 12k lenses, but no marketing material for why iTards should stop taking pics with tablets.
Might seem silly if you're just a casual shooter, but outdoor and nature photographers will appreciate the hassle free cleaning this coating provides. I don't think it's silly if it aids the craft.
Thanks for the link. I verified it in the Nikkor lens brochure.
Nikon makes it clear it’s talking about the coating in that video, but nowhere in that video is “FL” mentioned.
The other thing wrong with DPReview’s description is that the 800 mm doesn’t have the new coating. The new 400 mm is the first – and so far only – Nikkor with the new coating.
Yes, you are correct. You can also verify this by looking at the new 400mm f/2.8 lens at http://imaging.nikon.com. Below the lens image are a bunch of icons. The FL icon links to the Fluorite lens description and there is a separate icon called "fluorine coat" that links to the coating.
Canon uses Fluorine coating on many new lenses (8-15/4, 24-70/4, 24-70/2,8II, all new super-telephoto lenses), but marketing of Nikon works maybe a little bit better...
I know (hope?) you were kidding, but that stuff actually leaves a heavy residue or film on the surface of whatever you spray it on, it also wears off after a while... Two things they fail to mention in this and other various promo videos I've seen, it's still pretty nice for certain household items and outdoor stuff tho, possibly decent for certain electronics, glass not so much.
Canon uses patented, "home brewed" fluorite (artificially crystallizing calcium fluoride turned into fluorite) to include a very low optical dispersion index element into the design of some of their EF lenses, most notably their Super Telephoto offers.
Nikon tells us they will now be using fluorine (the element, whose primary mineral source is, wouldn't you know, calcium fluoride, CaF2) to make non-sticky front lenses.
I hope they find other, more optical-enhancing, applications for this useful element and its subsidiary materials, because I have it for years that it is precisely the fluorite use that makes Canon Super Telephotos superior to Nikons, as it can be verified both by looking at MTF charts from similar long FLs telephotos offers from both brands or simply by being amazed how stunning a F/2.8 shot taken with, say, a Canon 400mm with low cast afternoon natural light looks like.
If not, I'll reserve the need for fluorine, as used by Nikon, for the rare moments I will let 5 years-olds use their crayons with my lenses.
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