Cleaning a Circular Polariser

As long as you treat it with care, it should be fine. What you want to avoid is scraping bits of grit round it. If needs be, warm soapy water is fine to use.
 
dazzajl said:
If needs be, warm soapy water is fine to use.
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I'd be careful of soap, or it's likely to do undesirable things to the metal split ring & lubricants that make a CP-L spin. :)
 
Kaouthia said:
I'd be careful of soap, or it's likely to do undesirable things to the metal split ring & lubricants that make a CP-L spin. :)
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Good point. I tend to forget about screw on filters. :thumbs:
 
Boots spectacle cleaning spray and a microfibre cloth. Works a treat, I've even used it on my L glass without any problems.

:D
 
Just be gentle at first and work up from there if stuff is still stuck on it! Once it's a metal mount filter, I'd even be happy to use window cleaner on it - it's not going to leave streaks :) Put any cleaning solution on the cloth you are going to clean with rather than directly on the filter and dampen the cloth with it rather than have it soaked through.
 
Isopropyl Alcohol (aka lens cleaning fluid, as found in those little black bottles). A drop or 2 on a lens tissue should get rid of the grease. I would avoid soap, detergent and domestic window cleaners - soaps and detergents often have salt added and domestic window cleaner may well be vinegar based - neither salt nor vinegar will do lens coatings (very thin layers of metal) much good.
 
Nod said:
Isopropyl Alcohol (aka lens cleaning fluid, as found in those little black bottles). A drop or 2 on a lens tissue should get rid of the grease. I would avoid soap, detergent and domestic window cleaners - soaps and detergents often have salt added and domestic window cleaner may well be vinegar based - neither salt nor vinegar will do lens coatings (very thin layers of metal) much good.
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Isopropyl alcohol not marketed as a lens cleaning solution is actually not a great thing to clean lenses or filters with - it's likely to have some water contamination that will leave streaks.

Vinegar won't harm most coatings - the ones on pretty much all consumer lenses are metal oxides, not metals, so they won't react with the acid in vinegar. Your lens won't smell particularly good though, so I wouldn't recommend it too hastily!
 
By the way, there's a good summary of optical cleaning procedures
here. The polarisers they mention in section 2 are scientific ones, not the polarising filters we use. Section 4 deals with lenses/our filters. The metal coating they are talking about are the mirrors used in scientific research - electrically conductive transparent coatings (which aren't used on our lenses!) are typically Indium-Tin Oxide and not pure metals.
 
Home bargains do a lens cleaning kit for 99p if there's one anywhere near you.
 
I use a Hoya Pro 1 D polariser frequently and they do seem to be a bit difficult to clean. I use a lenspen for small smudges and this works well as long as you make sure there isn't too much graphite on the tip, this sometimes makes it worse as you can't get all the graphite off.

I use lens cleaning fluid and a lens tissue for the rare occasions it gets pretty bad, normally caused by sea spray which isn't great on lens coatings!!

Simon
 
My Hoya Pro CP came apart recently and the grease around the split ring left a lot of marks both on the filter I had (fortunately) forgotten to remove from the camera and on the CP lens itself. This was made worse where I tried to put it back together again (ended up taking it to a repair shop).

After trying various cleaning methods I eventually resorted to water and washing up liquid (fairy) which made a good job of it and the marks I thought were scratches from the split ring came off as well
 
Funny, I had a 77mm CPL do that and it was a Hoya. I've heard of a couple of other Hoya CPL owners that's happened to as well.

Ended up removing the remains of the filter with a pair of needle nosed plyers (very carefully). Managed to put it back together, but it's been sat in a draw for the last 2 years.
 
Is there any particular method (other than the obvious) to using a lens pen as I've found mine poor at removing smudges and wonder if I'd doing something wrong? I use the brush a lot but tend to end up using a microfibre lens cloth and a little lens cleaning fluid.
 
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