Are expensive PL filters worth the money?

[jhob]

I will soon be getting the tamron 17-50 and want a polarising filter to go with it. I notice the hoya 'pro' PL fliters go for about £100 but yet their standard PL can be picked up for less than £30.

What improvement would expect in the £100 filter? Is it worth it?

 

[CT]

I will soon be getting the tamron 17-50 and want a polarising filter to go with it. I notice the hoya 'pro' PL fliters go for about £100 but yet their standard PL can be picked up for less than £30.

What improvement would expect in the £100 filter? Is it worth it?

The short answer is "Yes" but like everything it depends how much you'd use it and whether you can justify the price to yourself.

Sticking cheap bits of filter glass in front of expensive optics with multi coated elements is nuts and bound to degrade the performance of your lens. Top end filters are made from top quality (lens quality) glass and will have coatings to reduce flare probably as good as quality lenses, so they should produce sharper and better saturated images than their cheaper counterparts.

I hate filters myself having got to the stage a few years ago where I needed a team of Sherpas to hump them around. That said, a polariser and a few grads are probably the only really essential ones you need.

 

[jhob]

I'd like some NDs, but they can wait as I don't do an awful lot of landscape work. I use polarisers a fair bit, very useful in the middle of the day when you don't have a choice of shooting earlier or later.

I imagine I will go for the cheaper filter initially and upgrade in the future.