TIFFEN 37mm UV Protector Filter

The product felt strong, solid, and well put together. The glass was clear with no visible tint or imperfections. Although this and another filter (same type different size) both arrived with smudges on the glass. The smudges were fairly easy to wipe off, but I suspect the items are either not cleaned before packaging, or I received someone's returned item. However, I had to return this item since they DON'T contain any anti-glare/reflective coating on them. When shooting towards a light source (light bulb, tv, sun, etc) a green reflection of the light source would appear on the recorded image. The green reflected image was caused by a reflection bouncing off of my lens's green tinted anti-glare coating which was bounced right back into the camera by this filter. If your lens isn't coated in an anti-glare coating the result will be even worse.

Instead I picked up Quantaray filters from a local Wolf Camera that were coated with the anti-glare. They only cost a little more, and the green reflection is now gone. Make sure you look for a filter with the anti-glare

Camera: Canon 20d, Lenses tested: 18-55, 28-135, 70-300

I bought this filter for my Canon 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens. The price was right, and I thought it would be a good way to protect the lens, which this probably does well. And while I am shooting under normal lighting conditions (flash or natural) the filter stays out of the way, but as soon as the lights go down this filter will ruin more photos than I can bear, due to an abundance reflective artifacts. If you take a photo of Christmas lights for example you will see the lights again in a faint green glow on the opposite side of the photo... VERY ANNOYING.

Any photographer who has the money to purchase a lens with a professional 77mm filter size can afford better than this uncoated Tiffen filter. I'm skeptical by nature, so I wanted to see for myself whether coated glass was really necessary. I purchased this Tiffen filter and used it on two different lenses and found that in almost every single photograph in which there was a light source, I found two smaller ghost images of the light source elsewhere in the photo. This uncoated glass really knows how to make lens flare POP (even if it's not the lens that's flaring...)! I sent mine back, with the biggest loss being my time and Christmas photographs of family that would have otherwise been very nice.

What made the two little ghosts appear on the Tiffen? Light as faint as Christmas tree lights, table lamps, incandescent overhead bulbs, etc. You name it, basically.

How do I know this was due to the UV filter and not my lenses? When I saw some pretty nasty flare, I just unscrewed the Tiffen filter and voila, my flare disappeared.

Le flare est morte. Vive le flare!

Seriously, spend just a bit more and get a good, coated (on both sides) filter; picky people like myself will gladly spend a little more and get a coated filter by Hoya or B+W, among others. The Tiffen is fine if you only shoot in the shade without any relatively bright lights; otherwise, my advice is to look elsewhere.

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