What filters to start out with?

[Sebastian]

Agree with Seb (again...) but maybe you mean a Circular Polarizer. This might be handy at some point, but not necessary when you're starting out. There's a big debate whether or not to use protective UV or skylight filters (I never do unless it's really bad weather), but if you do use them pick UV filters. Skylight has a pinkish cast to it that's supposed to warm up overcast day light. If you're shooting negative film, the lab will print whatever they want anyway - and with digital, setting white balance will correct that problem anyway.

Get a lens hood, though.

If you shoot nature, polarizer can be a great addition, cuts or amplifies reflections on water, foliage, etc. That being said, I have used my polarizer less than ten times in the four years I have owned it. I do use UV filters when it's raining, as it's the only way to keep water out of lenses, even though the rest is weather sealed, the fornt elements are not. Any other time they are free of any filters.

The whole thing with UV filters is ridiculous IMO, a filter will not protect a lens. If you drop a lens, the front element will not prevent things from falling out of alignment, it will not protect it from seizing the focus ro zoom rings, it will not protect the camera from tearing the lens mount off. The only thing that WILL, without a doubt, happen is the filter will break. And everyone tries to say "well the filter is cracked, so it protected the lens!!" That argument doesn't take into account the fact that a threaded fitler on the front of a lens is essentially a sheet of glass loosely mounted in a ring, a design that will easily crack with little stress. It is highly unlikely that it gave up its life to save the lens, and it is highly likely that it made no difference whatsoever in the status of the lens when it met with the concrete.

Use a hood. If the lens is expensive enough to require a protective front element, the lens will have a built-in one that is counted in the optical formula. Most long primes have a (relatively) cheap front element made of high-quality glass, so if something does fly at it it only costs a couple hundred bucks to fix instead of a grand.

The UV filter crowd is trying to prtoect against the most unlikely of threats, something hitting the front element. The real danger lies in dropping the thing, or getting it waterlogged, or worse yet, stolen. Save the money and put it towards equipment insurance.

[Irie Times]

Your argument's makes alot of sense, thanks for your inputs.

[Jeff82]

Seb,

I never really thought of it that way --and I don't use protective filters usually anyway, but you make a very intelligent argument.

--Jeff