Cleaning Filters - Can Glass Cleaner be used?

[jamesev]

My filters are a bit smudged, I have tried microfibre cloths but still a bit smudged. Can you use glass cleaners that kinda evaporate? to give them a good clean?

[LeeR]

Probably better off with mild soapy water. Lenses and to some degree filters have special coatings that are very sensitive to certain chemicals. Tor this reason you should never clean your lens with an article of clothing that may contain detergents that could damage on of these coatings. The coating, by the way, are their to help prevent light from bouncing back and forth between lens elements thus causing lens flair and other hazards. So, be careful, and use the mildest solution first.

[inkista]

I like using a Lenspen.

[Doug Pardee]

An eyeglass cleaning kit will pretty much do the job. All of them that I've come across use methanol (sweet aroma) and a microfiber cloth. You can buy a similar kit for cleaning camera lenses that'll probably cost you considerably more.

Me, I just don't put any filters on my lens.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

Me, I just don't put any filters on my lens.

That's great until you need a circular polarizer

I use the spray that I've been using for my eyeglasses for ages, never seen a problem. Most of the time any issues I have are dealt with, as Inkista said, with a lenspen.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

That's great until you need a circular polarizer

I've got a CP filter—a very nice Heliopan—but I haven't used it in over four years.

My photography is travel/vacation, so my use for a polarizer would be to make the skies a deeper blue. I get deep blue skies simply by being careful about not overexposing. I chimp the blinkies and the histogram, and I get no more washed-out skies.

By leaving the polarizer off, I don't get the unnatural gradient effect in the sky due to different angles relative to the sun, and I can use a lower ISO along with either a faster shutter speed or a higher f-number. Sharper pictures with less noise is, for me, a lot more valuable than surrealistically deep blue skies.

Oh, and I like the brighter viewfinder image, too.

Certainly there are other types of photography that can take advantage of a polarizer, but for what I do my polarizer is benched.