CPL: Hoya or B+W? What's your opinion?

Yes, Wilt, I've seen that. Several years ago now, I did a fairly in-depth assessment of Hoya filters for the UK Trade Press which involved rather a lot of to-and-fro with the UK Importers & Hoya's own Technical folks. Rather interesting from a theoretical stand-point but far more information than I needed - loadsa charts & sensitometry. But then, I'm just incurably inquisitive.

I never could work out quite how they were supposed to evaporate that coating onto just one side of a filter and not the other - seems like rather too much trouble to make an inferior product. I'm not aware that Hoya have ever spray-coated filters. However, the myth still continues. There's an awful lot of misinformation/disinfo​rmation about filters (as with everything else photographic) - some historically accurate but now outdated, some pseudo-scientific and some of it sheer marketing gobbledegook. Some could even be nothing more than Maker Y having a sly dig at Maker Z, implying something without stating it. Naughty but not impossible!

Certainly it would seem counter-productive from our standpoint to take a carefully chosen, technically superior lens and potentially ruin it for the sake of saving a very few £ $ € ¥ on a filter. Multi-coating is definitely the way for us to go; preferably one which takes into consideration the needs of sensors instead of film. This was the background to the tweak which changed Hoya Pro1 to Hoya Pro1D/Hoya Pro1 Digital and, I understand, the shift in Sigma lenses to the DC/DG specs.

As you may surmise from the lack of 'HMC' designation, some of these Hoya filters aren't quite as new as they once were! And a couple are ever so slightly 'hopeful'

Snydremark wrote in post #14872291
I can't speak to the others because I haven't shot with them, but the Kaesemann is the CPL that I wound up with and I wouldn't even hesitate to recommend it. It's a well-built piece of gear, stands up to regular, frequent use, is easy to clean and gives great results.

Also, for the 15-85, the slim model is not necessary; I use the standard model all the way out to 10mm without any vignetting.

Just as a straight CPL, I prefer it over the much more expensive Vari-N-Duo that I own; which may be getting retired too, now that I've gotten my mitts on a Big Stopper

Good stuff there. Thanks.

Whortleberry wrote in post #14872337
Multi-coating is definitely the way for us to go; preferably one which takes into consideration the needs of sensors instead of film. This was the background to the tweak which changed Hoya Pro1 to Hoya Pro1D/Hoya Pro1 Digital and, I understand, the shift in Sigma lenses to the DC/DG specs.

The Hoya Pro 1 Digital marketing gobbledygook is one fair piece of inferior marketing!
They 'improved' the filter edge by painting it black, and a number of acronym filled marketing sleight-of-mouth claims backed by absolutly zero objective data about how they actually measured as better than the older non-Digital filter version-- a break from Hoya past presentation of graphs and numeric data.
And, lo and behold, the light transmission of the Digital filters is LOWER than the S-HMC line! Reminds me of 'for Digital wiring' for stereophiles, with no data to support the hype.

Well you have to love "acronym marketing"... kind of getting old in all sorts of industries.

Alternatively, the transmission of the S-HMC is higher than the Pro1 Digital. I was told by Hoya that they reconfigured the coating to compensate for the different reflectivity of a low-pass filter relative to the previous standard based on average film coating. But you're dead right about information - they are getting rather more than spartan with their useful information these days. Blood out of a stone is easy by comparison! Perhaps they don't want me sitting in my garden shed knocking out fakes? Most flattering but it'd be a vast, a universe-sized overestimation of my capabilities.

My favourite one is "BAF - Black Almite Frame". I've followed three different metallurgical threads on this and the culmination of informed opinion is that .......... Almite is a registered brand of solder for joining aluminium! The nearest applicable suggestion is that 'Almite' is a bastardisation of 'Alumite' which basically is Anodising. So the much vaunted filter rim is anodised aluminium. 'Scuse me, ain't that like most everyone else's (not B+W of course) only with an arty-farty name? Yes, you've gotta just love it when Marketing get hold of things.

But who cares. We're only the poor suckers whose money they want.

A review in Advanced Photographer (June 2011) compare 12 different brands and the Marumi Super-DHG came up trumps. I bought mine based on this "independent test".

Dutch

I just wanted to thank you guys for recommending Marumi.

I should be buying one in the next month and I'm excited to use it.

Whortleberry wrote in post #14872337
I never could work out quite how they were supposed to evaporate that coating onto just one side of a filter and not the other - seems like rather too much trouble to make an inferior product.

Eons ago, in my first job, I worked in the semiconductor industry. One of the processes used for fabrication of solid state electronics is 'vaccum deposition' using 'evaporation' or 'sputtering' of the material to be deposited. If both sides of the optical glass are not well exposed to the vapors of the metallic coating, that might well result in single-sided coating on the filter.

Pffft.

I bought the B +W. Awesome!

That is all.

Wilt wrote in post #14967615
Eons ago, in my first job, I worked in the semiconductor industry. One of the processes used for fabrication of solid state electronics is 'vaccum deposition' using 'evaporation' or 'sputtering' of the material to be deposited. If both sides of the optical glass are not well exposed to the vapors of the metallic coating, that might well result in single-sided coating on the filter.

Wilt: You must be just a young fella then - in my first job they'd barely invented conductors (and they were folks who took your fare on public buses ). I jest of course.

Take your point about the possibility of single-sided coating in the manner described, it just seems a long-winded way of making an inferior product. I'd have thought that the cost of setting up a separate coating line would be more than the saving on materials.

Where's the popcorn?

Whortleberry wrote in post #14994930
Wilt: You must be just a young fella then - in my first job they'd barely invented conductors (and they were folks who took your fare on public buses ). I jest of course.

You were born before the bronze age?!

There might be only a single coating fab line, but a double-sided coating might entail the added time and labor to flip the blanks over as well as the electricity and process time to deposit the second side coating.

Yep - Beta tester of Bronze Age Meritol-Metol, then ABC Pyro.

Ah yes, the battle of the geriatric technologist.

Not so much of the "technologist", if you don't mind. I'm very easily offended these days.

PS: I'm OK with the "geriatric" bit, it's just the "technologist" I struggle with - it sort of implies that I actually know something. Wouldn't want to give the wrong impression, don't ya know