Does Uv Light Damage Camera Lens

A UV filter is a glass filter that attaches to the front of your camera lens and blocks ultraviolet rays. They used to be necessary for film photography, merely at present most photographers use them to protect their lenses.

At that place'southward a lot of misinformation almost UV filters out there. Some photographers swear they're essential, while others are every bit sure they're a full waste of money. In some photography shops, the salespeople won't let yous leave with a new lens unless you've besides ponied up for a UV filter; in others, they'll laugh you lot out the door if you lot try to buy them. So what'south the truth? Let's find out.

What Does a UV Filter Do?

A UV filter blocks UV low-cal as it enters the lens. Call up of it as sunscreen for your photographic camera. Some old photography films were very sensitive to UV calorie-free so, if you lot didn't use a UV filter, you would terminate upward with a blueish haze in your photos. This was peculiarly mutual if you were shooting somewhere there was a lot of UV light, like on a really sunny mean solar day or at loftier altitude. Y'all can run across it in this polaroid by MoominSean on Flickr.

The matter is, modern films and digital sensors just aren't sensitive to UV light. It doesn't affect them the way it does older films. This ways you lot don't need a UV filter to block UV low-cal in club to have expert photos. Nonetheless, this hasn't stopped UV filters from picking up a secondary utilise as a protective filter for your lenses. Some photographic camera shops are reluctant to permit you walk out the door with a new lens, if y'all haven't as well bought a UV filter to protect information technology.

Does a UV Filter Protect Your Lens?

The basic idea is that, if you drop your $2,000 lens, instead of breaking the front element of the lens, yous break your $35 UV filter instead. It's a lot easier to just selection upwardly a new filter rather than ship your lens off to—possibly—become repaired. Unfortunately, while the idea sounds expert in theory, information technology doesn't really hold out in practice.

Steve Perry from Backcountry Gallery drop tested a load of dissimilar lens filters and lenses and what he found was that the filters added minimal, if any, protection.

Perry's big takeaway was that the drinking glass in UV filters was a lot weaker than the glass used in the front chemical element of lenses so the filters suspension from drops that don't even ding a lens, regardless of whether or not there'south a filter on information technology. As well, if a lens was striking difficult enough that the front element was damaged, in that location was usually large amounts of internal harm as well. Even in the few cases where the UV filter might accept protected the front end element, the lens was dead anyway.

This all means that if you drop your lens with a UV filter and the filter breaks only not the lens, all you probably did was intermission a filter. The lens would accept been fine either way. And if you drop your lens without a UV filter and information technology breaks, a filter wouldn't accept saved it.

This doesn't mean UV filters offering no protection. It only means they don't offer any protection from hard drops. They're great for protecting your lens from dust, scratches, sand, sea spray, and other small environmental hazards.

The Optical Effects of UV Filters

There's 1 final thing to consider near UV filters: putting any actress glass in forepart of your lenses affects the image quality.

UV filters block a small percentage (betwixt 0.1 and 5%) of the light that passes through them. Because of how the low-cal interacts with your filter, this reduces the sharpness and contrast of your images very slightly. It's a barely noticeable effect and hands fixed in Photoshop, but it is in that location. It's likewise worse in cheap filters from no-name brands. Filters from the likes of Hoya, B+Due west, Zeiss, Catechism, and Nikon showed the least touch on, while filters from brands similar Tiffen showed the biggest.

More seriously, UV filters also make it more likely that you'll get lens flare or ghosting in your images if you're shooting a scene with a bright light source in information technology. In the image above, you tin come across some artifacts caused by the UV filter and the lens flare.

Should You Utilize a UV Filter?

Deciding whether or not you should use a UV filter isn't a simple question. It really depends. The best advice I tin give you is:

A UV filter won't protect your lens from much more than dust and scratches. If you lot're shooting at the beach or in the desert, putting one on is a good idea, merely otherwise, you lot're probably fine without one.
UV filters have a minor upshot on the quality of your images. Most of the fourth dimension, it won't brand a difference. Simply if you admittedly demand the highest quality image possible, or your photos are showing lens flare and other artifacts, you should remove your UV filter.

I'd argue that there's definitely a place in your camera bag for a UV filter. Just it's up to you whether keeping it on your camera all the time is worth it. I prefer to accept my UV filters off if they're affecting my images, other people adopt to put them on if they're shooting somewhere muddied.

Prototype Credit: Abraksis/Shutterstock