Hama filters

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418
Name
James
Edit My Images
Yes
Does anyone use Hama filters?

I have Hama filters bought from 7 day shop, UV filter for lens protection to be precise. These I have always found to be of a good quality, I have used the lens both with and without said filter and comparison shots seem to show no difference.

A friend of mine however thinks that they are of such a low quality it would seriously affect image quality.

Obviously I know there is no point spending hundreds, or even thousands on a lens and putting a piece of cheap glass in front of it. I have never seen Hama, although cheap in cost, to be of a very cheap quality.

Am I wrong? Peoples thoughts?
 
Hi James,

Current thread running here...you may wanna have a look when you get a min ;-)

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=285981

I think it is a slightly different conversation there.

Back to the point... Simple glass, found in cheap filters, can be very reflective. Reflections can be very bad and will degrade IQ by reducing contrast, adding more flare, ghosts etc. This is all bad news. The good news is, glass coating was inventing decades ago to minimise these issues. Hence, a decent multicoated filter will help to preserve 98-99.9% original quality, or might even help in case of somewhat defective lens design. MC lens filters will show less reflections and have a colour tint at an angle.
The same apply to eye glasses [binoculars, picture frame glass and so on]. I was very surprised to discover many opticians happily sell inferior non-coated glasses as a budget option :cuckoo:!

I am guessing HAMA is just old plain reflective glass. The better ones are Hoya Pro-1D / Super-HMC / HD series, BW MRC, and others. They will typically cost more.
 
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