I thought it was time I treated myself to a really good polarizing filter for my larger lenses with a 77mm diam filter thread. Then the difficulty starts - they are expensive, and everyone says something different. I've been looking at the multi-coated filters from B+W and Hoya. The prices seem to vary from $150 to $250 - quite a lot for a relatively simple piece of glass. I've read that the new Hoya HD line is fantastic, with the coating extremely resistant to dirt, finger-marks and scratches, and that the B+W brass rims are beautifully finished, and never bind.
Does anybody has experience of these high-end polarizers - any tips, advice, warnings? B+W are probably more conservative, but also more solidly built - Hoya are probably more innovative. B+W give a 10 year warranty - not sure how long Hoya give.
Anyway, if any of you out there have some useful advice, I'd much appreciate it.
Robert I use B+W and though not cheap I have never had a problem with them even with the best Hoya I have had the glass simply fall out and they bind so often I carry large rubber bands with me to get them off.
I agree with the B+W, but if you buy from ebay there is a chance they may not be brass. I have found Filter Connection is a good place to buy from. http://www.2filter.com/
I would advise against slim filters in the 77mm and larger sizes, especially if they will be used on telephoto lenses, like the 100-400. If the filter itself is also thin, it has a greater chance of not being flat and that will destroy image quality. So for large physical aperture telephoto lenses, you really need top quality filters. You can et away with cheap ones if used on short focal length wide angle lenses as the physical apertures are a small fraction of the filter diameter.
I'm preparing an article on evaluating filter quality, but you can always do a quick check when you get the filter by putting it on your largest aperture longest focal length lens and with the camera on a tripod, photograph a flat subject that has lots of detail with the filter on and off and see if there are any sharpness differences.
When some of my photography-interested coworkers were talking about this, we found a decent article/test/review online here - Test Article.
The article is for 72mm, but you can apply it to whatever size you want; they even evaluate cost as a factor, and try to give you a "value" rating for each filter. Let's be clear - they were being thorough and objective, this is not just a subjective review. They not only tested things like flare with bright light sources, but were also using calibrated laboratory equipment to evaluate the performance of the filters in a controlled environment. You can see test pictures and data for each filter on individual pages, and see the results compared together at the end. Well worth the read (at least the first few pages, which include the final results).
Circular Polarizing filters
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