Filter recommendations for Fujinon GF lenses?

highdesertmesa wrote:

Painter19 wrote:

highdesertmesa wrote:

Painter19 wrote:

highdesertmesa wrote:

Of the protective filters I've used over the years on GF and other lenses (Canon RF, Leica M):

Breakthrough – Top quality. Never buy from their "official" Amazon store. I got two filters in a row that had been replaced – one was a fake and another was a different brand filter entirely. Always order direct from their website, and you may have to wait months for some filters types and sizes to come back into stock.

Zeiss T* UV – same quality as breakthrough but with aluminum rings instead of brass. I prefer brass, but I like the T* coating so I use them almost exclusively

B+W MRC Nano – I stopped using these as I confirmed that for some lenses they could have a negative impact on corner performance versus no filter or versus the Zeiss T* UV filter. These were genuine B+W filters from Adorama and B&H purchased over different time periods, so I ruled out it being a bad batch. I have no idea why – perhaps the nano coating can do strange things to the light ray angles with some lenses. I doubt it's because of the glass quality itself. In any case, I stopped using them completely as I didn't want to have to test every lens with them.

Leica UV – Not that any sane person would use these, but since I'm not sane, I've bought them for my Leica M lenses before. They use aluminum rings that can get easily stuck/jammed (versus Zeiss UV's aluminum rings which just tend to never get super tight). I have had these negatively impact corner performance on some Leica M lenses.

Like others, I have to use protective filters due to the environments I shoot in.

For polarization for digital cameras, I use Heliopan linear polarizers. No need to use circular polarizers and have to deal with the strange angles of darkening you can get. With a linear filter, you simply are dialing in the strength of the effect by rotating the filter.

To return to B+W for a second. Did your testing showing some loss of corner sharpness using B+W protective lenses include their clear protective lenses?

I was using only the Clear MRC Nano. Never owned (that I recall) a B+W UV.

I’ve gotten so much great information in this thread from You, and Jim and others that I’m just going to take a few days to go through it and digest it all. One thing I want to be clearer on is whether to go for a clear protective lens, or a UV protective one.

My gf50s II is a digital camera,, and has been pointed out, virtually all digital cameras today come with their own UV protection for their sensors and other(?) parts. Jim mentioned that there is filtration screening light below 380 nm in my system effectively eliminating almost all of the UV part of the spectrum. The Breakthrough UV protective lens has it appears a similar transmission curve. The Zeiss T* screen wavelengths below 405 nm or so with a somewhat more abrupt transmission curve. Is the UV filtration of UV protective lenses generally fully duplicative of my camera system’s own UV filtration?

The various makers of UV protective lenses tout their products as reducing haze, revealing more detail, enhancing color saturation maybe and seem to mostly attribute that to their lense's UV filtering. They provide lots of A/B image comparisons They do mention their lens coating's anti-reflective properties as well, but I’m still left with the impression their UV filtering is doing a lot of the haze removal.

These are old A/B UV filter comparisons are left over from film days. 30 years ago those comparison shots were probably 30 years old

Ignore UV or non-UV unless you're ever going to use them for film.

As for the other coatings, some reduce reflections (Zeiss's "T*" coating and B+W's "MRC" coating) and some are for water repelling (B+W's "Nano" coating). So that tells you that the B+W Master filters that are MRC + Nano are meant to be anti-reflective and easy to clean. Zeiss may have some water repellence in their coatings, but they're not as crazy repellent as the B+W Nano. Not sure what Breakthrough is up to, but they don't hype their coatings with marketing names.

I’m a guy who welcomes some ( “some" being the operative word) limited haze reduction, but don’t want overly high contrast images, with overly saturated darks , and overly saturated colors. The protective lens designers are making certain aesthetic decisions when shaping their lense's transmission curves and anti-reflective properties. I can imagine also that their lenses might look clear as one looks through them , but it’s their effect on photographs that counts.

Guess I’m looking for a “clear” protective lens, or a not overly contrasty UV one that allows some haze in the resulting images. Maybe even an easier to remove one like Breakthrough as I might need to take it off a lot ?!

Honestly you're overthinking a simple protective filter. Time to hang up the phone

Yeah, I hear you. You’re probably right:-|,  I really appreciate your help !