The most important (and as a rule most expensive) part of your camera is a lens. Here are some tips on how to protect your investment against weather, dust and environment.

Lens Cap

Keep your lens cap on when you store your camera in your bag. Sure, most camera bags now have soft anti-scratch linings but that doesn't mean that dust or sand can't get in there and get stuck between your lens glass and the lining. Ouch.

Lens Hood

Lens hoods are used to eliminate lens flare from your photos when you shoot outdoors in daylight.

 You'll probably notice though that most pros keep their lens hood on even if they're shooting indoors. This is because the lens hood can act as a barrier between your glass and everything else around you. Even if people bump into your lens while you're walking around, you're assured that your glass is safe.

UV Filter

Some of you might be going, "But it takes a while to attach a lens hood if I use a bag and I might miss a great shot." Well, here's the alternative. You can use a UV Filter as another type of protection for your lens that you can just leave on. UV filters are used to filter out, you guessed it, ultraviolet light.

Indeed, optical filters have some problems. Any extra glass in the lightpath between scene and CCD has the potential  to degrade your image in various ways—e.g., via internal reflections, dirt or aberration. But new lens costs much more then almost invisible image defects.

In my opinion, the UV Filter must be installed "by default", but in seldom cases when it really may affect on a quality, you may remove it.

Last update: 30-01-2008 13:54