Multi coated or single coated polarizer filter?

Is the additional cost of a multi-coated polarizer filter worth it for a D200?

What does multicoating buy us besided a bit more light passing through to the

sensor?

I wonder who's making single or double-coated PL/CPL. HOYA & B+W make uncoated & multicoated CPL (PL is uncoated), but not mono or double-coated PL/CPL. Optically they are equal IMHO but all HOYA multicoated are difficult to clean and prone to scratch. B+W MRC is much easier to clean but also more expensive.

Multicoating improves contrast by reducing reflections between elements. The improvement in light transmission is trivial on a couple of surfaces. A polarizer is often used to increase contrast and saturation in a scene. Those who have them tend to use them a lot, so it makes sense to get a good one.

People who use polarizers tend to use larger apertures in order to compensate for the approximate two stop light loss from the polarizing filter. Using larger apertures makes ghosting more susceptable. Ergo, multicoating becomes increasingly valuable for this application. It would seem to be false economy to try to save a few bucks on this already expensive filter. Go for it!

On one hand, I learned from experience shooting a roll of 35mm in the Reading Terminal farmers' market here in Phila. I used a 1951 Retina II with an f/2 Xenon, and there was flare all over the place from the overhead lights. I don't blame my equipment: I should have shaded the lens or expected the flare and worked it into the composition.

 

On the other hand, if you can make one size filter work for most of your shooting, it really is false economy (at least in time) not to get a higher quality filter. (I have a stock of lenses with 6 different mount sizes, although 49mm and 52mm account for half of them.)