Hoya HMC Super UV Filter

My rating of this filter is that you get what you pay for. When considering the amount of money that I have spent on Heliopan, Singh-Ray, Formatt, and Harrison filters, the Hoya is a bargain. The Super HMC coating on the filter is excellent and it cuts through the UV rays when shooting scenics and landscape shots in color. It has no real effect when shooting B&W but, it remains on the end of my lens as a protector. The purpose here is to tell you about the filter and not about the number and amount spent on my lens so, let's cut to it. UV filters are made to cut the bluish cast of UV rays when shooting outdoors and especially landscapes and scenics of distant objects. The filter does what it is designed to do and does it well. Using uncoated or single coated filters will leave you with a scenic that has a blue cast of open fields and mountain ranges unless you are shooting at the perfect time of day. If you have the time to scout the location and can determine what is the perfect time of day, then you have more time than money or so much money that you can sit there all day to wait for the perfect shot. If this is not the case, attach this filter to the end of your lens and bracket a couple of shots and I am sure that you will get exactly what you are looking for. Want a better filter? Spend about three or four times as much and purchase a Heliopan or a Singh Ray.

There is a lot of controversy about whether or not a UV filter makes your photos better or worse. The manufacturers claim that it "removes haze" and purists say it degrades your photos. I was very skeptical because another piece of glass between you and the subject has to be a risky proposition image quality-wise, but I was very interested in protecting my lens investment. I chose this filter for my Sigma 18-125mm OS lens because it seemed to be about midrange quality, as I suppose the lens is, and Hoya seems well established.As I often do, I did a number of test shots and to my surprise, on a sunny day at longer focal lengths the photos were unmistakably sharper with the filter than without it. This was not true at 18 mm where it was fuzzier with the filter, but this difference all but vanishes when stopped down to f/11. (with or without the filter, the lens appears to work best at f/11.) In some shots it appeared to make the color of grass a little more naturally green.I haven't read a scientific discussion about why these improvements might be happening, but it makes sense that if you prevent UV from entering the lens barrel, it will not be able to randomly bounce around between all the glass elements inside. I recall from basic science that light at the high end of the spectrum such as UV light tends to scatter much more than longer wavelength light such as visible light.So for now I'm leaving it on, remembering to take it off for wide shots with wider apertures.

I gave this product 4 stars because it works, it is multicoated on both sides of the lens, and it is inexpensive. However, the orange coating comes off really easily. Coating both sides of the lens is crucial to eliminate glare and reflection on the inside of the lens. It also allows more light to travel through the lens which results in less haze and better picture quality.I have compared the quality of the shot with and without the filter. The filter does seem to reduce some of the glare making the sky slightly bluer and getting rid of some of the glare. It will also decrease some of the light coming into the lens but the kit lens is so fast it doesn't really hurt performance (even indoors or low light situations). I think the glare reduction as well as the protection it offers to the lens makes this a great buy. I paid over $19 for mine last month and now the price has dropped a bit.I keep the UV filter on my lens at all times (unless I break out the Polarizer filter). I do not like the prospect of getting my main lens dusty or dirty.

The Super HMC UV filter is distinguished by the optical coating on both sides of the glass. This is a high quality filter and worthly of high end lenses. I have them on both an 80-200mm f/2.8 and a 17-55mm f/2.8 Nikon lenses. No demonstrable reduction to the image quality is visible on images taken with either lens. In my sports photography work, I am typically right on the court very close to the action and having the glass of a $1,000 lens exposed is too much of a gamble for me. The only downside of this lens is that it's a bit difficult to clean as streaks seem to stick to it if the lens cleaning cloth (microfiber)isn't wet enough with cleaning fluid. However, I've found that if I flip the cloth to a dry spot right and swirl from the center outward to the edge, away go the streaks. The price ($39) through the Amazon affiliated dealers is excellent.

Hoya make good filters, and the UV filter is more for protection than any optical alteration. That said by getting a multi-coated filter you do not degrade the quality of your lens. Why would you put a cheap filter on a quality lens?Why would you want to risk an expensive piece of glass when you can get a protective filter. Using cameras exposes you lens to dust, finger prints, salt air, and extreme conditions. When you go to clean off these elements you could accidentally scratch your lens; I did once wrecking the lens. I also had someone run past and pull the camera out of my hands, and the camera hit the ground to a shattering of glass. It was only the filter, the lens itself was in damaged, a selling point that has a good quality filter on all my lenses.So I recommend always have a UV filter on your lenses to protect them, multi-coated filters are optically superior to cheap ones, so you don't lose the quality of you expensive lenses.