Is there a 43mm to 46mm adapter??
 

I just wanna know is there such a adapter, 43mm to 46mm in Singapore? Cause there is lots of Wide and tele len filter we can't use.

Hi there, I see you are also from Singapore!

Yes, there is 43 to 46. Go down to Alan Photo, Sim Lim or Photo Guide, Peninsula Plaza or Camera Workshop, Peninsula Hotel and you'll probably get it. About $10.

Why not go all the way to more standard 52mm or 58mm filter sizes? I am using 43 to 52 permanently on my MX350.

...or from 43mm to 49mm. Most pro filters start with the 49mm size and go up from there.

52mm to 62mm is considered normal. Bigger or smaller filters are rare and costs more.

Hoya filters in Singapore are about $10 to $40 for 'normal' and about $20 to $80 for 'rare'. (All prices in SGD)

Hi, all.

I've been doing some research on filters, particularly the Hoya range. Tiffen & Hoya are available in Malaysia but quite limited in range. It's rare to find 49mm filters 'cos Sony's 37mm filters are king!

Quite interesting, Hoya's got a few grades of coating. Even the cheapest UV filter is coated (single coating on both sides of the glass). The coating reduces glare & unwanted reflections - by changing white reflections to something pinkish, so it's less obvious. Without any coating, only 90% of light passes through. With the coating, up to 95% of light goes through.

A lot of the cheapo filters don't have any coating. I compared one of my cheapo UV filters for Sony (Raydawn brand) & it didn't have a coating, reflections of a florescent tube on the filter glass surface are white - so the filter glass is like a mirror. Compared to my Hoya UV (single) coated, you would see that the reflection is pinkish & less visible or mirror-like.

However, from my searching the web, it seems that if we stick to 43mm filters for our Panasonic MX300, MX350, MX500 etc, we can only get single coated filters. Sigh.

By moving up to minimum of 46mm we can get the next step up, HMC (Hoya Multi Coated) which reduces more glare & unwanted reflections so up to 99% of light passes through.

Go for 52mm and we get to use the Super HMC which allows 99.7%. WOW!

Go up to 58mm and we can use super combination & ultra thin filters etc.

For more info, check out
http://www.2filter.com/prices/products/Hoya98.html (look under Hoya Polarizers)
http://www.camerastore.com/cat_003_hoya/003-hoya.html
http://www.camerastore.com/cat_003_hoya/003-hoyacats.html


So, should we treat our expensive multi coated Leica lenses to some super coated filters? What do you think? Does 90% vs 95% vs 99% vs 99.7% matter?

Or should I say, do you have the money / budget, and do you crave perfection & love your MX enough? ;) ;)

Thanks, Steven.

Tiffen will always make you a filter, on special order, but this is expensive, especially if you're using a lower currency, like Canadian currency.

Unfortunately if you have the Panasonic WideAngle or Tele Converter then you need to put your filters on the cam first, then the wideangle / tele goes on the filters. That means you're stuck with using 43mm filters.


YowCH mentioned in an email to me, that if you stack more than two 43mm filters you're going to get vignetting. With 52mm filters the filter's outer ring is further away, so you can stack 3 or 4 before vignetting.


For those of you looking for Hoya 43mm filters, there's a PDF file here:
URL http://www.madsens.com.au/cat2001/HOYA.web.May.2002.PDF

complete with part number, description, and price in AUS$. Great for Australians!

It's funny: For odd / non normal filters i.e. 43mm you get less glass but pay twice as much compared to a 52mm. :(


A note about multicoats: I have been wearing eyeglasses for about 20 years now. 3 years ago I paid extra for my new pair to be multicoated. I can see the difference: A night time scene in the city streets, with all the lights on, looks very much sharper with multicoated spectacles. Less glare from oncoming car headlights.

Without multicoats, the same scene seems to have a sort of "milky white cast" 'cos of all the glare & reflections.


Hey, I just thought of this: we can send our uncoated filters to the optician and let them multicoat it - the snafu I see is, how to get the glass off the filter ring & back again? Anybody?

HOYA filters are all removable, the metal inner ring holds the filter against the outer ring. You should be able to remove the inner 'hold-down' ring to take the filter out of the outer threaded ring.

Hmm... interesting to know that opticians can do the multi coating. How much do they charge?

Hi, YowCH!

Aha! That's good news! Thanks for the info! I'll need to try on my own filter first...

For my spectacles, they charge an extra RM 100 to multicoat both left & right eye lenses. That's about Sing$ 46 (assuming exchange rate of Sing$ 1 = RM 2.15), and that's about USD $26.

Note that they can only multicoat GLASS lenses, and not plastic lenses. It's better that you multicoat on new, non- scratched spectacles.

In fact, they even asked me if I wanted a UV coating, since I work facing computer screens everyday! Should reduce the risk of eye cancer from too much sunlight too...

Caution: I haven't actually gone to an optician to ask him to do my filters - yet. But I'm sure they can do it (logically speaking) - after all, a filter is a flat piece of glass. And I know they can multicoat a pair of spectacles that is sent to them. I guess the problem they would face is the removal & refitting of the filter ring 'cos they need just the glass itself (to dunk in chemicals?).

Thanks For All Reply!
 

Its the pain of owning a cam having the odd filter size. Whereas the rest of the market is awashed by the Sony's 37mm and 58mm.

I own both MX300EN and MX500EN, handled both TRV900E and PD150 before. Sometimes I wonder how Panasonic produce products for the market. If you look at their product lines,
oddball like MD9000 and DVC15 shouldermount cam was created with specs that is inferior to MX300EN except the XLR input. MX300EN has skip the North American market but at least they would get the MX500(PV-DV953).

At least they would be getting it right on the DVX100. With a 72mm filter size and 3lux minimum, finally, something to compete against the PD150. I wonder why it took so long for Pana to come up with something against the VX2000/PD150 segment.

"I wonder why it took so long for Pana to come up with something against the VX2000/PD150 segment."

Pana has been a strange company for years, in way of their consumer line---even stranger, sort of a bottom feeder, in North America. Looks like that now they are getting a little smarter, perhaps they are afraid of Sony's big name overshadowing their consumer line. In North America, they have been trying hard to compete with Sony, or so it seems. Mind you, Pana was the first company to have a miniDV cam in the market, 2 months before Sony did.

Steven,

The coating works out to be about SGD23 per filter/lens. That's a little more than the amount we pay above normal filters for Coated/Multicoated Hoya. For filters bought without coating, this may be a good solution :), I'll rather not buy my whole set again!

Example, SGD10 for UV Guard and SGD25 for UV Guard coated.

A while back I tried using a Hoya polarising filter with my MX300 and Pan wide angle and tele adapters, but I have stopped using the filter because under certain lighting conditions (overcast with the sun high in the sky) you could get a pale pink tinge over one corner of the image and a greenish tinge over another corner. The tinges were reminescent of the tones of multicoating on the pana lens. Very occassionaly I've noticed these tinges with the Pana wide angle adapter, but they were made worse by the polarising filter.

Simon

Thanks for the info, sBennet. Did you post that puzzling problem on DV.com some time back? Or perhaps some one else - the post had a picture of a lady attached - they had the same problem with polarizer & Pana WideAngle.

Polarizers can do strange things - green & red / rainbow like hues can appear if the conditions are "just right". Even vidcamming past plastic windows with sunlight hitting on the window i.e. aircraft window make the hues appear. Got to watch out for it in the LCD / viewfinder / monitor. Sometimes, rotating the polarizer may help. Sometimes, it doesn't help at all!


Anybody out there can explain how a polarizer works - the technical bits? Maybe point us to a URL?


Red & Green hues appear on my multicoated specs's lenses as well. That's the "trick" they use to reduce reflections. Without multicoating, the reflections on the lens are white-ish. With multicoating, the reflection is now LESS intense & noticable because they are now colored red or green.

If you look head on to the lens, the reflections are green, but if you look at the same reflection but tilt the lens angle to an extreme angle, the reflections become red.
You can see this "effect" on your Leica vidcam lenses as well as other good camera lenses. Other manufacturers may also use blue and yellow hues.

=====


I went back to check out my Hoya - like YowCH says, it does have a retainer ring. I tried turning it around / unscrewing it by putting my micro screwdriver into the slot and trying to slide the left & right. No go. I suppose I could pry out the retainer ring. Then my good sense caught hold of me - what if I break the glass? Aaaaggghhh! Abandoned the project. My Hoya 43mm UV was hard to find, and expensive too. Besides, it was already single coated on both sides, so I'll live with that. If it still bothers me, I'll special order some HMC grade from US B&H, if they have it.

My Sony compatible cheapo filters: Vitacon 37mm Skylight 1A and Raydawn 37mm UV didn't even have a retainer ring! The whole glass is held together by the filter ring. That's what you get for cheapo filters! I don't think the optician will be happy with that: he'll end up multicoating the ring as well.

So, like YowCH said, it may not be economically viable to multicoat via optician. Next time, I'll just buy the right filter from the start!

Speaking of buying the right filter..., I have a 43mm Heliopan UV on mine. (It's multi-coated.) The filter was expensive, but the darn thing doesn't work right. It refects like crazy, so it's useless. Now I have a 43mm Cokin UV, as I do on my DVL9500s, and it works great! Oh, and the Cokin cost me $10 US! What a steal, I mean deal. +_+