B+W MRC circ. polazizer coatings

Good morning,

I need advice on this filter which I just bought new, from ebay - HK. I opened the

box and found it very dirty on one side, apparently the glass surflace was touching

the soft material used inside the inner plastic box, which may have had a litle

grease or something on it. I could not clean it with my standard tools: moisure

from breath and clean, soft cotton tissue. I had to dampen the tissue and use a

small quantity of dish soap. It got clean but I had to repeat the process again and

again as it seemed that every time I touched the glass it got dirty in another place

(i replaced the tissue with clean one different times). In the process I had the

impression that the filter gets dirty very easily, much more than my other humble

hama linear polarizer or than the front glass of my lenses. Is it true? Are the MRC

coatings more prone to collect or show dirt? Well for a filter of this price the

condition in which I found it was really horrible, and the box was new and sealed!

Thank you, Marco

Hi,

 

I have the identical same filter and it is very very good however it is a nightmare to clean, always seems to have a subtle greasy streak on it and it deos not easily go away, requie lot of undesirble rubbing/breadth/cleaning fluid etc etc but when i hold it at an angle in the light and inspect it still seems to have some slight streaks.

 

It also has a kind off a "dotty dotty" texture to it but I learnt this is normal.

This is strange. I've found the MRC filters to be amazingly easy to clean, and to stay clean easier than other filters. And none of mine are "dotty". I have about 8 B+W filters with MRC, circular Kaesmann (sorry about the spelling) polarizers from 52mm to 77mm, 80A in similar sizes. They seem especially resistant to fingerprints. They clean right up with a Pec-Pad and either a single drop of Eclipse (even for a 77mm) or two drops of ROR. I prefer ROR, there's very little it can't clean. I also have non MRC B+W filters (their 415 high strenght UV that I use for blacklight work, the 403 IR+UV, and the 092 IR) and those also clean easily and have excellent coatings.

 

Marco, you bought a German filter fron Hong Kong? Are you in Hong Kong? I can't see any way that third country routing would save you any money, unless you bought a counterfeit filter. If so, Lord only knows what you've got for coatings.

 

That aside, the residue your dealing with is a complex hydrocarbon exuded from the foam liner of the filter case. If I had to make a wild guess, I'd say that somewhere on its long journy of planes, trains, and boats, or its vacation in warehouses, it got subjected to temperatures a bit higher than the storage temperature rating of the filter, and the foam got a bit "gloppy". Anyway, as any complex hyrocarbon, it's not partticularly soluable in water, and its affinity for the cleaning cloth is about the same as its affinity for the filter, so you're just moving glop around.

 

Dish soap isn't particularly effective on plastic residue, either. If it were, it would eat its way out of the bottle. (That's why you don't transfer Elipse to other bottles. It will destroy a Nalgene bottle. Been there, done that).

 

Methanol (original Eclipse) will tear apart most anything that gets on a lens, from fingerprints to the "dirty" part of raindrops. ROR is even better. I was amazed when I first started using ROR, that the Pec-Pads were coming away discolored even when I cleaned what I thought were "clean" filters. It's not as dramatic as the ROR literature, I never noticed his claimed 1/2 stop improvement from cleaning a filter, but it is noticeable.

Hello Marco:

 

I bought one, new, a couple of years ago. It was quite dirty when I received it and it was hard to clean. It seemed to me that it had some kind of oily film on it. It was so bad at first that I thought it might have been a defective lens (I thought maybe the lens coatings were lifting).

 

I used lens cleaner fluid (don't know what it is made of - I bought a large bottle years ago and rarely use it) and lens tissues to gently do the initial cleaning. I was very careful with the fluid (I applied only a small amount to the tissue) to ensure it would not end-up between the elements.

 

For a while, this lens became dirty very easily and I had to clean it several more times to remove all of the "oily film".

 

It is fine now and I just use a blower/brush/microfiber cloth or, for a stubborn finger print, a lens pen. I usually end-up touching the outer element when I am rotating the filter through a lens hood.

 

I am no expert, but, I would avoid using my breath (vapour) on this lens because I think the breath could end-up between the elements and grow into fungus.

 

Cheers! Jay

Thank you for sharing your experiences and for your tips, I will try to locate an appropriate product to clean the filter. Joseph, I live in Italy, I ordered from HK as the price was about 30% better and transport cost was very similar. It may well be that the filter is counterfait, but aside from this problem it looks very well made and both the cardoard and plastic boxes don't look cheap, so I think the problem may be as you suggest with the travel around the world and the temperature it was subjected to. It seems I am not alone in finding something oily on the filter surflace... I think I will throw away those foam liners. For what concerns the better prices you find in HK there must be something with import taxes making the prices almost universally better than europe.

Thank you, Marco

Joseph the "dotty" texture I refered to is only on the polarizer. It is barely noticeable but if you hold it up to the light and look very carefully you may notice what I mean.

 

Is Eclipse Fluid basically methanol? I would have thought methanol is too fast and could also damage coatings? Perhaps ethanol or propanol would be safer but I am too scared to try it on my lenses or expensive coated filters. I have always wanted to order a bottle of Eclipse fluid from the USA but they don't ship such liquids anymore due to security rules.

Mohammed, I'll try again with mine. I gave them a pretty thorough looking over on initial delivery, and also on cleanings.

 

Yes, "regular" Eclipse is basically methanol, so pure you don't have to worry about it leaving noticealbe residue of its own. E2 is ethanol. I have no idea what ROR is.

 

Shipping shouldn't be a problem, the Eclipse folk have distribution on 5 continents and dealers in 40 countries.

 

http://www.photosol.com/world_dealers.htm

While the bottle does not indicate the composition of the contents, it smells strongly of methyl alcohol.

RoR is water, liquid soap, ammonia, salt (sodium chloride) and "alcohol". I'm not sure which alcohol. "Alcohol" usually means ethanol. The amount of each ingredient isn't specified, but I'd assume it's mostly water and alcohol. I have no idea why they put salt in it.

 

 

 

Multicoated filters don't get dirty easier, nor are they harder to clean. They just show the residual dirt/oil much more than monocoated or uncoated filters. See http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/lens_filter_cleaning.html for more comments on cleaning lenses and filters.

Follow the link for the product suggested by Schneider Optics to clean its filters: maybe a surprise ;-) ttp://www.schneideroptics.com/info/handbook/pdf/B+WHandbook8_9.pdf

Thanks Bob and Marco for those great links!

Bob, you might want to add this to your filter cleaning guide. B+W claims their "multi resistant" coatings are a little different than your regular "multicoated" filters. They have one more coating layer in additon to a conventional multicoating. That extra layer isn't an optical interference filter, it's there to increase hardness, and provide a surface that has less hydrogen bond acceptors and a more favorable electronegativity so that water and most oily contaminents won't bond and transfer to the surface of the filter.

 

This is the "in thing". Pentax has a similar coating they call "SP", for "Super Protect". They claim it can "repel dust, water and grease". Tokina, who develops this stuff jointly with Pentax, calls it "WR" for ?Water Repellent" and they say "This new coating makes marks such as spots left by water or finger-prints much easier to clean than standard multi-coating". I also remember Nikon saying the new 24-70mm f2.8 has a similar coating, but can't remember the Nikon nomenclature.

 

As far as I know, B+W is the only company claiming a repellant coating on filters, but I expect Hoya to folow soon.

Almost all of the B+W CP filter has been greased in between to give you a smoother rotating action. Just don't touch the glass after you adjust the filter.

 

Get a Zeiss lens cleaning fluid and clean it.