Panasonic 14-42mm ii with a hood and a polarizer?

cameron2 wrote:

greenjp wrote:

I have a 52mm, 3 position collapsible rubber hood with a polarizer on the front that I use with all my lenses via step up rings - a Panasonic 20 1.7, Olympus 45 1.8, Panasonic 45-150, and the 14-42 v2 same as yours. I find this works pretty well but it does render the other hoods redundant. I still use them when I don't want the polarizer. Here it is on the 20mm.

If I remember tonight I'll try putting the polarizer on the step up rig and mount to the 14-42 with the bayonet hood attached and see if I can answer your question more directly.

The issue with the polarizer (or any other filter) is that you want to keep it close to the lens, so Jeff is definitely on the right track here with a 3rd party hood that can attach to the front of the filter!

Note that some polarizers (including a really good one that I use) don't have threads on the front, so be very careful when you are looking for one. (This is bad for two reasons. The first is that you can't put a hood on the front like we're talking about here. The other reason is that you can't put a reversing ring on and use a second polarizer as a 10x ND filter!!!)

Lastly, go through all of your lenses and figure out what size filter will work best for your lenses. I ended up with 58mm and step up rings as necessary to get there. The reason is that you generally want 1 really good filter, not 10 cheap filters of various sizes. A good polarizer runs about $200 or more, so getting the right size the first time is important.

Thanks for the suggestions. Which filter do you have in mind that costs 200$? I was thinking of getting this one, which costs 129$ for the 46mm/52mm version. It seems to be double threaded but I need to verify that. The Hoya Fusion that ended 1st place in the last LensTip comparison is about half the price and I consider it as well.

All my lenses are in the range of 37-52mm, so I was thinking of sticking to 52mm. It looks like using a step-up to 52mm, a filter or two, and then a 3-state hood will be the easiest configuration that covers all my lenses. I hope it won't vignette.