Polarisers

[Ben johns]

How much of a difference is there between say the Polaroid £10 polarisers and the £20,£30,£50 ones?
Just lost my first cheap one so looking for a new one.

 

[GTG]

In general the cheap ones use lower quality materials, thinner, weaker, possibly degrade image more and in my opinion are made to look the part but are not.

You have to be very careful because there are massive amounts of fakes of the popular brands and look convincing unless you know your stuff.

 

[Ben johns]

In general the cheap ones use lower quality materials, thinner, weaker, possibly degrade image more and in my opinion are made to look the part but are not.

You have to be very careful because there are massive amounts of fakes of the popular brands and look convincing unless you know your stuff.

Are Hoya considered good? They have a couple around £25-£35

 

[Unicronatron]

Are Hoya considered good? They have a couple around £25-£35

I have a Hoya Pro1 for one of my lenses. No issues with colour cast or vignetting. Not noticed any change in image quality.

Also have a B+W polariser in another filter size.
I've avoided the cheaper filters for fear of degrading image quality, since it's sitting in front of expensive glass worth spending a bit of money on it.

Had a cheaper one once and I seem to remember it getting stuck and then falling apart when I managed to get it off

 

[redhed17]

Many years ago I bought a cheap Cokin Polariser, and it seemed OK. My 18-70mm lens and 70-300mm lens had the same thread size, but when I put the Polariser on the 70-300mm the AF stopped working and the view was blurry at 300mm. The quality of the glass just wasn't there. Took it back to the shop and they said they had never seen any problems before and tried to blame the camera. Tried a more expensive one and everything worked. Returned the filter and saved for a Hoya Pro 1, which is what I have used for each lens ever since.

 

[wave01]

Expense glass and cheap filter. Why pay a fortune for a lens and then put cheap filter in front of it

 

[redsnappa]

Be carful on just judging the quality of filter on price alone. There are some price filters such as LEE range that perform poorly when tested.

 

[Nikon photographer]

Are Hoya considered good? They have a couple around £25-£35

He careful of buying so called "Genuine"Hoya filters off sites such as eBay, there's so many take filters out there, buy from a reputable photographic dealer and you'll be fine, might be dearer but at least you'll be getting a genuine filter.

 

[Mr Badger]

Many years ago I bought a cheap Cokin Polariser, and it seemed OK. My 18-70mm lens and 70-300mm lens had the same thread size, but when I put the Polariser on the 70-300mm the AF stopped working and the view was blurry at 300mm. The quality of the glass just wasn't there. Took it back to the shop and they said they had never seen any problems before and tried to blame the camera. Tried a more expensive one and everything worked. Returned the filter and saved for a Hoya Pro 1, which is what I have used for each lens ever since.

Was it a linear or circular polariser? I remember auto-focus SLRs first coming out and they required a (more expensive) circular polariser as they wouldn't work properly with a linear one. Perhaps that was the problem?

 

[Ben johns]

He careful of buying so called "Genuine"Hoya filters off sites such as eBay, there's so many take filters out there, buy from a reputable photographic dealer and you'll be fine, might be dearer but at least you'll be getting a genuine filter.

I usually get my stuff off Amazon

 

[Ben johns]

I have a Hoya Pro1 for one of my lenses. No issues with colour cast or vignetting. Not noticed any change in image quality.

Also have a B+W polariser in another filter size.
I've avoided the cheaper filters for fear of degrading image quality, since it's sitting in front of expensive glass worth spending a bit of money on it.

Had a cheaper one once and I seem to remember it getting stuck and then falling apart when I managed to get it off

Probably look at Hoya then. The pro 1 is £60, can’t that at the moment but there’s a £30 one

 

[Mr Badger]

Make sure the £30 one is a circular and not a linear polariser.

 

[redhed17]

Was it a linear or circular polariser? I remember auto-focus SLRs first coming out and they required a (more expensive) circular polariser as they wouldn't work properly with a linear one. Perhaps that was the problem?

It was a Circular Polariser. Even then I knew to get a Circular Polariser. I think most are Circular Polarisers, but always check just in case.

The first one I got was just cheap. I think with lenses and filters you generally get what you pay for. Another thing you get with more expensive filters is good coatings. I like to have the Polariser on my lens almost all the time during daylight, so some durability is a good thing.

Depending on how wide a lens you plan on putting it on, you may want to look for a low profile filter so as not to cause any vignetting. The Hoya Pro 1 filters I have used on a 16-85mm and 16-80mm DX lenses with no problems.

 

[ancient_mariner]

I've used SRB and Neewer filters and not seen any obvious degradation, however that's only on lenses between 16mm and 135mm - possibly if I went longer then there would be problems.