B&W MRC filters

[Tom Stanworth]

I have started to pick up round screw filters for my 35mm and RF645 systems and have settled on B&W MRC filters for a number of reasons.

1. In the smaller sizes they are only a little more expensive than brands such as Hoya (not that there is anything wrong with Hoya!)

2. The brass rings, whilst heavy, do not bind. This is not a myth as I have found out.

3. They overall feeling of quality, along with the supposedly hard MRC coating. The well known softness of the Hoya HMC coating and associated cleaning problems was a real negative for me.

One thing I have noticed and wonder about is this:

I have an orange and a yellow both in B&W MRC and also in the form of uncoated Hoyas. They appear to be almost exactly the same colour and density across the two brands - really indistinguishable. Just looking at the filters you can see how much less flare there is on the MRC lenses and by that I mean you can see crisply through the filter when held at arms legth and an angle as supposed to a lesser contrast through the uncoated ones. I then raised them to my eye well away from sources of light that could give rise to flare, looked straight thru and they STILL produced far more 'aparrently' contrasty views. I was under the impression that the coatings should really only come into play where there is a light source that could cause flare, but as I say the B&Ws when peered thru appeared to produced a very noticably contrastier view as if even under diffuse light they are defeating 'ambient/veiling flare' or whatever the term would be. I have made shots on thru both MRC B&Ws as well as Hoya HMCs as well as uncoated HMCs recently but these have been really mixed up and I have not had a chance to print anything yet.

When I get the chance I might shoot some shots thru the uncoated, HMCs and then MRCs and see of there is any visible change in contrast etc actually on film. It is possible that what I saw with my eye would not really manifest itsefl on film....but maybe it will. Just handing the filters does however suggest that there will be a difference...

Cant wait to print my negs...and now only 5-6 months away from a new darkroom!

 

[david b]

B&W used to make the Hasselblad filters. If they are good enough for Hasselblad, they are good enough for me.

 

[Bob F.]

Apropos to nothing: I could not fit my nice brass mounted B+W filters on one of my LF lenses because it had taken a knock that distorted the rim very slightly. Somewhat bizarrely however, a cheapo ali mounted filter fitted easily - presumably the threads were less accurately, or more deeply, cut... I took the glass out of the cheap filter, screwed it on as hard as I could and now my B+W filters screw happily into that filter's threads Happy days....

Cheers, Bob.