FS7: Lens Cleaning

V

Vintegreo

Well-known member
I'm trying to be better at keeping my lenses clean and am wondering about favorite items for a kit, more specifically the wipes. I used Pancro Professional Lens Cleaner with both kim wipes and the typical optical wipes you get with glasses and found that the kim wipes introduced a fair bit of lint and that the other ones had to be kept immaculately clean themselves to work well.

Obviously I should keep a blower brush handy too.

I found out the hard way recently that the sun is very unforgiving of crud on the lens! I've been at this a long time, but I guess it happens to the best of us!
 
https://www.zeiss.com/camera-lenses...MIrtbZ68X_1gIVBG5-Ch34iwpLEAAYBCAAEgK0p_D_BwE

But generally I try to stay at 5.6 and focus at 1meter on wide-angle lenses in such conditions to enable DOF to hide potential dirt on the lens.



Vintegreo said:
I'm trying to be better at keeping my lenses clean and am wondering about favorite items for a kit, more specifically the wipes. I used Pancro Professional Lens Cleaner with both kim wipes and the typical optical wipes you get with glasses and found that the kim wipes introduced a fair bit of lint and that the other ones had to be kept immaculately clean themselves to work well.

Obviously I should keep a blower brush handy too.

I found out the hard way recently that the sun is very unforgiving of crud on the lens! I've been at this a long time, but I guess it happens to the best of us!
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Pancro, microfiber lens clothes, Zeiss lens wipes and compressed air. I do actually need to get a manual lens blower. I have one with my still stuff, but not my "real lenses". I keep clear filters on the front of all of my real zooms(13x4.5's, 22x7.8 and 17-120). My primes generally are only ever used in controlled sit-down situations and are "naked", as are all of my still lenses.
 
Run&Gun said:
Pancro, microfiber lens clothes, Zeiss lens wipes and compressed air. I do actually need to get a manual lens blower. I have one with my still stuff, but not my "real lenses". I keep clear filters on the front of all of my real zooms(13x4.5's, 22x7.8 and 17-120). My primes generally are only ever used in controlled sit-down situations and are "naked", as are all of my still lenses.
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I think I'm going to get a clear filter for my Fujinon 20-120. Seems like good insurance. It's ironic, too, all the smaller lenses I've owned for still cameras have had a protection filter and this most expensive lens I've owned in my life doesn't have one!
 
Vintegreo said:
I think I'm going to get a clear filter for my Fujinon 20-120. Seems like good insurance. It's ironic, too, all the smaller lenses I've owned for still cameras have had a protection filter and this most expensive lens I've owned in my life doesn't have one!
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I know guys that are the same way, they've never liked having anything "unnecessary" in front of the lens, and let's be honest, I'd rather not have to have anything there, either. BUT I've spent most of my career shooting in one of the worst camera environments in sports, motor racing, so I've always had protective filters on the front. And about 5-6 years ago I was doing a shoot for a tool company and one of the scenarios had us in a junkyard and they were cutting a part off of a car or something like that. I thought I was well enough away to avoid getting hit by sparks. The next shot, I kept noticing a speck on the lens. I went to clean it and it wouldn't come off. A hot spark had pitted the filter. But the filter did its job and protected the front element. Pulled the filter and slapped the old one back on. Oh yeah, I had just swapped out the old filter for a brand new one the night before. A ~$300 Schneider... But still better than not being able to finish the shoot and having to send the lens to Fuji for repair.
 
Run&Gun said:
I know guys that are the same way, they've never liked having anything "unnecessary" in front of the lens, and let's be honest, I'd rather not have to have anything there, either. BUT I've spent most of my career shooting in one of the worst camera environments in sports, motor racing, so I've always had protective filters on the front. And about 5-6 years ago I was doing a shoot for a tool company and one of the scenarios had us in a junkyard and they were cutting a part off of a car or something like that. I thought I was well enough away to avoid getting hit by sparks. The next shot, I kept noticing a speck on the lens. I went to clean it and it wouldn't come off. A hot spark had pitted the filter. But the filter did its job and protected the front element. Pulled the filter and slapped the old one back on. Oh yeah, I had just swapped out the old filter for a brand new one the night before. A ~$300 Schneider... But still better than not being able to finish the shoot and having to send the lens to Fuji for repair.
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TRUTH!!!!:thumbsup:
 
Run&Gun said:
I know guys that are the same way, they've never liked having anything "unnecessary" in front of the lens, and let's be honest, I'd rather not have to have anything there, either. BUT I've spent most of my career shooting in one of the worst camera environments in sports, motor racing, so I've always had protective filters on the front. And about 5-6 years ago I was doing a shoot for a tool company and one of the scenarios had us in a junkyard and they were cutting a part off of a car or something like that. I thought I was well enough away to avoid getting hit by sparks. The next shot, I kept noticing a speck on the lens. I went to clean it and it wouldn't come off. A hot spark had pitted the filter. But the filter did its job and protected the front element. Pulled the filter and slapped the old one back on. Oh yeah, I had just swapped out the old filter for a brand new one the night before. A ~$300 Schneider... But still better than not being able to finish the shoot and having to send the lens to Fuji for repair.
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To filter or not to filter? If you choose to use a protective filter be mindful of the flaring that a protective front filter can produce. Particularly at night under stadium lights or in any situation where you are shooting into a light source such as a sunset or car headlamps / street lamps.

Being that the risk of damage to the front element occurring while shooting is relatively rare, most pro video shooters run without any protective filter. Damage to the front element most often takes place in between shooting- during transport. If you are disciplined about using the lens cap you can run sans protective filter with little risk of anything damaging the front element. I say that even though I also had an incident where sparks caused damage but in my case it was damage to the front element of a Fujinon 13x zoom. The front element had to replaced at the cost of a couple grand.

Even though I have been burned in the past, I currently do not use protective filters on any of my glass. The reason being the ghosting and flaring that a protective filter can produce no matter how good the quality of the filter. And in my experience, because a protective filter usually has a larger surface area than the front element of the lens and a protective filter is less receded than the front element of the lens, a filter is more prone to finger prints / becoming dusty than is the smaller and more receded front element of the lens.

The decision is a function of they type of shooting you are doing and the environment. A "film" style shoot where a camera assistant is always baby-sitting the camera and a matte box is being used....vs a doc or ENG style shoot where you are running solo, being rough on the gear, and often having to place the camera down on the ground in between shooting.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, the more expensive a lens the less likely someone is to use a protective filter. It seems you often see protective filters on lower cost still photo lenses but you rarely see anyone using protective filters on lenses such as Zeiss Ultra Primes or a Cabrio zoom. The reason for that, I suppose, is that the high-priced glass is most often rental gear and the renters of the gear place a priority on a clean image over protecting the rental gear. Too, the more expensive the lens and the more high quality the optics the more illogical it seems to place a "cheap" piece of glass in front of all those high quality glass elements. Where as a $100 front filter on a $800 lens seems less illogical. The quality of the filter ( as suggested by the cost of the filter ) isn't greatly dissimilar from the quality of the lens ( as suggested by the cost of the lens.)

There is a sound case to be made both for and against using a protective filter. No right answer there. If your priority is the image, then you run without a filter because the image can't be damaged by a failure to use a filter but the image can be damaged by use of a filter.
 
Yeah, my bread and butter shooting is currently master craftsmen and women making stuff in their shops. Dust, metal shards, hot pieces of glass and blacksmithing flying molten debris. A high end protective front filter is not an option, it's a necessity for me.
 
No extra glass whatsoever here. Just being careful - and if a lens hits a hard enough objects, the protective glass will shatter but the front element will probably get scratched at the very best, as well.

Piotr
 
moldcad said:
No extra glass whatsoever here. Just being careful - and if a lens hits a hard enough objects, the protective glass will shatter but the front element will probably get scratched at the very best, as well.

Piotr
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If only it were that simple... We wouldn't need insurance, we wouldn't get hurt and we'd all die of just old age.

Okay, slight hyperbole, but you get my point. In certain environments, you're taking a huge risk not protecting the front element of the lens from potential damage. Maybe I'm just more anal or gun-shy than others, because of where I've spent the bulk of my career shooting.
 
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