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Does filter quality matter?

I haven't seen any difference between a cheap filter and an expensive one. Some of the more expensive filters are almost impossible to clean and keep cleaned. I can't remember the brand, but those were not fun filters.Just make sure they're clean when you buy them and no worries.

On a similar subject, I've had a number of lenses over the years that had serious scratches and coating issues on the front element, and sometimes on the back one too. Had one lens w/ a deep scratch in the center of the rear element, a Leica R 90 Summicron that had a rear element that looked like it had been sand blasted on the side that faced inwards. They all gave images just like the clean ones. Fog/haze/fungus will be the real problems, that's difficult to overcome w/o a good cleaning.

You can use just about any filter on any lens w/ step rings.
 
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That does not work for black& white film.
 
MattKing said:
Tough to do with a slide projector.....
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Almost no one bores people to death with slides. Those that shoot film, shoot negative films.
 
Sirius Glass said:
Almost no one bores people to death with slides. Those that shoot film, shoot negative films.
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Excepting of course, the small but still meaningful number of us who still like and use and project transparency films.

6x4.5 slide - it looks great when projected.
 
Sirius Glass said:
Almost no one bores people to death with slides. Those that shoot film, shoot negative films.
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I scan chromes I shoot and make slide shows digitally that I play on a 75" 4K TV. I add music, titles, credits, and short video clips to the stills to keep the interest up. The rest I just bore them to death.
 
Alan Edward Klein said:
The problem is you can't recover later if you have blown out the sky, especially if shooting color chromes.
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There are too many problems with graduated ND filters to make them useful. I liken them to the filters that make stars all over or the prism filters that make six copies of an image.
 
momus - I'll keep you in mind as a person never to buy a used lens from! Or filter.

Matt - I got nostalgic for a slide show, so have a roll of Ektachrome 100 in my Nikon right now. It might take me a year to shoot it all, since I rarely use 35mm for anything; but still, it's fun to do once in awhile. This morning I did run into my old stash of AN glass-mounted 6X7 slides, looking for something else. A close friend of my older brother made his living, and quite a good one, on slide show competitions back in the 60's. But when Aunt Maude gave a 3 hr slide show of her vacation to the Muffler Shop Hall of Fame in Fresno, well, that was a long snooze.
 
DREW WILEY said:
... But when Aunt Maude gave a 3 hr slide show of her vacation to the Muffler Shop Hall of Fame in Fresno, well, that was a long snooze.
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Please PM the address so I can go there when I am having insomnia.
 
Like everything else, there are good quality slide shows, poor quality slide shows and a wide range between.
It really helps if the slide show is put together by an interesting person, who has interesting thoughts and does interesting things and/or visits interesting places.
And of course, takes good photos.
For many years, Fred Herzog used to rent places like church halls in order to show his 35mm Kodachrome slides. And a lot of people looked forward to seeing them.
Unfortunately, I only heard about them after the fact.
 

I had put together very good slide shows, but people have moved on over the years.
 
Heck, I remember full gymnasium slide shows that people paid to attend. We didn't have any movie theaters in the mountains, or TV yet. Those plagues came later,
and you had to cross a deep river canyon to the next county to see a once-a-week movie. My Dad had his own moving film projector; so that's how we did it in the living room. But the big public slide show screens needed pretty hot projectors that probably weren't all that good for the longevity of the slide dyes. Going back a lot further, I've heard old-timers describing aligned 3-projector carbon arc slide shows using RGB in-camera separation negatives. Allegedly best color ever, but in a downright hot room, and slow between sequential images, with some fried fingers if the operator wasn't awfully careful.
 
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If I couldn't tell the difference between the effect of a cheap versus high quality filter, I'd instantly book an appointment with an eye doctor.
 

What was the going rate to attend one of those shows? A bushel of corn or did you also have to throw in some turnips?
 
momus said:
I haven't seen any difference between a cheap filter and an expensive one. Some of the more expensive filters are almost impossible to clean and keep cleaned.
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One such modern, seemingly "repellant" filter out of an rummage box made it into my stack of filters. I still found no simple way way to clean it, when necessary...
For reasons of practicality I so far prefer the older coatings.
 
I dont understand Tiffen. Great marketing, they always seem to be present... and all their filters are uncoated. Like, who even buys that?
 
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I really doubt that filters get 32 coats. I mean, lenses get only a coat or two.
 
NB23 said:
I really doubt that filters get 32 coats. I mean, lenses get only a coat or two.
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Lens manufacturers have claim 'single coat' or 'double coat' or 'multicoated' for many decades. Now even eyewear lenses can have multicoatings...seven different types of coating are offered!
 
NB23 said:
I dont understand Tiffen. Great marketing, they always seem to be present... and all their filters are uncoated. Like, who even buys that?
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I do only when I cannot get that particular filter from Hasselblad, Heliopan, B+W, ... and it is the only source.
 
wiltw said:
Lens manufacturers have claim 'single coat' or 'double coat' or 'multicoated' for many decades. Now even eyewear lenses can have multicoatings...seven different types of coating are offered!
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2 coatings is actually Multicoating.

Besides, there is no benefit to go beyond a few coats. We are not talking Painting walls here.
 
Tiffen's thermal sandwich process allows for an especially wide selection of filter colors, but makes coating difficult, They offer just a handful of those.
 
NB23 said:
I dont understand Tiffen. Great marketing, they always seem to be present... and all their filters are uncoated. Like, who even buys that?
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Historically Tiffen has provided filters to the professional cinema market for an extremely long time...and carried over to TV shooting as well.

About Us

We Help Create the World's Greatest Images! Our business strategy for over 80 years, our strategy has always been to succeed through direct customer interaction and feedback by creating innovative products and services.
tiffen.com
 
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Yes, it’s their marketing pitch... but the name of the game is coating.
 
NB23 said:
Yes, it’s their marketing pitch... but the name of the game is coating.
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Given the very high degree of lighting control inherent to movie and TV shooting, they do not shoot under the same high demand circumstances as encountered by a hobbyist or photojournalist, so the importance of having good coatings is less of an issue. The average filter buyer is not well versed in what is truly the mark of 'quality', and the marketing panache has clout, especially in view of the prices commanded by the multicoated filter lines. So much of the market today is driven solely by price...why our small specialty photo stores are all vanishing. Same issue for hardware stores, where price wins so often in spite of lack of service/knowledge at the giant chain hardware.
 
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