Lens filters are as ever popular as they are useful. They come in all sorts of variations. Some are coloured specifically for use in black and white photography, others are are used to correct the white balance when shooting colour film and others, yet, lead a life as polarisation filters helping to cancel the adverse effects polarised light can have. Neutral density filters are used to deal with extremely bright conditions in order to retain sufficient control over both aperture and shutter speed. There are of course also effect filters, but these have lost much of their appeal now that everyone has Photoshop firmly installed on their computers.

By far the most common and useful type of filter is the standard issue UV filter. These come a variety of flavours and to be honest with you I only use UV(0) filters, since they take care of nigh everything that could possibly ruin an otherwise perfectly good picture.

However, besides filtering nature’s unwanted side effects, I use UV(0) for one main reason and no other. Filters act as added protection for your valuable and fragile lenses. Granted the lens casings are usually quite sturdy, as least mine are, but once you get a scratch on the front lens element you can basically kiss your investment good-bye and shop around for a new one.

Experience has shown that there is little need to buy the most expensive filters. For my birthday I recently asked for and was very kindly given an excellent filter by my parents. It’s a Hoya Super HMC Pro1 Multi-Coated UV(0) filter. It’s truly excellent, because it weights virtually nothing, is extremely thin and doesn’t produce any noticeable ghosting effects whatsoever when mounted on Canon’s equally brilliant EF 85mm f/1.8 USM prime lens. However, keeping the filter spotless and clean is proving really rather more difficult than with any of my other cheaper lenses. I don’t know why this should be, but grime and dust sticks to it like mud on the inside of a car’s wheel arch (to put it mildly).

The moral of this story, then, is buy cheap filters that you can simply wipe clean without fear of damaging the delicate multi-coating. At the end of the day your UV filter is going to be more useful protecting the front of your lens than anything else. Going over the top investing in expensive high-grade once again appears to be more trouble in the real world than it is worth.

Happy snapping!