<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>just wanted to share this cautionary tale with you. <br>
So I have always placed a UV filter on the front of all my expensive lenses as a means of protection. Now some have told me this is not a good idea, you are putting a piece of cheap glass in front of your expensive glass, decreasing the image quality, yada yada yada. Well I was always debating it, but thought to myself, my god I'd rather spend the money to replace one of those filters than the whole front lens element, and better to have slightly lower image quality than a scratched lens!</p>
<p>So in my 3 years as a professional photographer, and 17 years as an amateur, none of my filters ever got scratched, leading me to believe that using my lens hoods, the chances of my actual lenses getting scratched would be low. But what has happened is when lenses have fallen on the lens element the metal of the UV filter gets bent out of shape. This makes it next to impossible to get the filter off. Also if the filter is no longer perfectly straight or has a chip as a result you may really introduce some bad image issues!</p>
<p>So recently my 24-70 was on a tripod when a guest knocked over the camera. I had the strap on but when reaching for the camera going down, it hit the floor lens first because by leaning down for it, it gave it slack. There's the first lesson learned. But then to get the UV filter off it took just about everything under the sun. I couldn't use the lens at all the rest of the wedding because the UV filter had a bit of a chip. Luckily I have other lenses to back myself up (newbs reading this, this is why you need multiple lenses and multiple bodies!!!!)<br>
Upon getting home I tried everything you can imagine to screw the thing off, no luck. Finally I resorted to wire cutters which did get the filter off, but you have to do this with the most insane level of care to not risk hitting the lens element.<br>
So now I see that what I was trying to prevent all along, of scratches to the lens really don't happen, but lenses hitting the floor at less than great angles, etc, can really dent the UV filters and make it really likely to get stuck, making it likely that your front lens element would get messed up in the process of having it removed/cut off. So my suggestion is, don't risk the decrease in your image quality, ditch the UV filter, and use your lens hood even when you are indoors and not trying to prevent flare. When you are the dance floor I think that lens hood is the best protection you could have. <br>
The other thing to learn from my mistakes is as I was going through and trying to remove the filter myself, it hit me, I was likely voiding my insurance on that lens. But if I'd just taken it to a repair shop straight away it likely would have been covered. So don't make my same mistake. If it's a lens that costs more than the cost of your deductible, do yourself a favor and bring it in to the repair shop first, don't try it yourself!!!!</p>
<p>On a secondary note, after a lens ever hits the ground, other than you just looking at the images coming out that appear fine, how can you tell if it is still ok? Can you send it to canon or something to have things checked out? If so, how much does that type of thing run???? With my previous ones I just said, ok I can't trust it again since it took a tumble from about 15 feet up, and got a new one. But this time it only fell about a 2 feet. Oh yeah, it was also on my BRAND NEW 5dmkIII when this happened. So is there anything I should do to have the 5dmkIII checked out? Thanks for any suggestions you might have!</p>
