how often do you go through UV lenses?
 

i hear they are there to prevent scratching to the real lense. how often do you pros change them?

Before video I was in photography, I would buy a camera and a UV or haze filter, put it on, clean it on a rare ocassion when it was really dirty. Don't know that I every replaced one.

I've had my video cameras for a couple of years and haven't replaced nor do I plan to replace the UV filters in the forseeable future.

Mickey Stroud

I've got UV filters on all my old Nikkor lenses. Oldest one is, I believe, around 30 years old.

I manage to get one or two damaged every year. Usually when I'm chasing the SWAT teams and bullet bits bounce back from the steel targets.

Lost the last one to a bit of gravel that was kicked up by a flash-bang that landed a bit to close to me. Fortunately I was wearing hearing protectors or I'd be more deaf than I am.

But I have some very old ones too. At least 30 years old.

Yep. Had that problem. The enemy was up on the hill and only a 50 foot drop to my right. Just me, my Nikon and ol' Dusty, a sarge that goes way back.

That Nikon had more holes in it than Swiss cheese but not that UV filter. Dusty made sure of that.

I wince every time I think of ol' Dusty. Mainly from the shrapnel in my shoulder and the fragments in my head.

I have never replaced one. Given the nature of my work, I have, trashed a couple of lenses, but the UVs or optical flats have always somehow survived, go figure.

RB

Ya always hit 'em with the body of the camera, right? Much more solid.

I used to know a guy who was shooting a race riot in the late '60s and whacked a guy over the head with a Bell & Howell 16mm camera, in self defense. Didn't hurt the camera. I fell out of a tree with one one time. Messed me up but didn't hurt the camera. You can't do that with video cameras.

Always screw on a honkin' rubber lens hood onto the UV to protect the UV (and the lens housing against knocks). :-))

Bill, did you sell your F2 and Nikkor lenses yet? The digital still world is waiting for you. :-))

No, I haven't got serious about selling that stuff yet. But if anybody was interested I probably could be talked into selling. Actually, I got out the camera and shot some product stuff the other day, and everything still works fine. My old Sekonic light meter still works too...I remember one time dropping it about 40 feet into the mud. It was in its leather case. Then an asphalt truck ran over it. I dug it out of the mud, cleaned off the case, and it still works. Good think it was about a foot of mud.

Personally, if I owned a Nikon F2, I would keep it. That's the best Nikon manual ever made---and your Nikkor lenses are good ones as well. (I just have a lowly FM2T with 3 Nikon E lenses---I had more, but settled on these 3. The 3 Nikkor lenses I would like to own are the 50mm F1.8, 105mm and 28mm---I forget the F-stops---the manual versions---what I'd really like to have is a Mamiya 6 and maybe the Leica M6 or 7, or Bessa 2, which I think is better in some ways and can also take Leica lenses. But I'd have to get into the wedding photography thing full time to make the Mamiya 6 plus gear to pay for itself. I guess I'll just stick with my lowely FM2T and see about those Nikkor lenses on e-bay. Using E-bay is like playing the stock-market.)

As far as UV's go, I only had one scatched years ago. I was going through Manitoba bush and my UV touched some 100-year-old barbed wire. The cam, she was okay. I was trying to work my way down to a creek, since I say trout jumping from a distance and want to capture their jumps. Ahh, nothing like taking fish head pics. :-))

50 bucks Bill and I'll drive over and pick it up. So no shipping charges!

Haha, 50 bucks? That's a pipe dream---now where are my matches---puff, puff. :-))

that makes me wanna smoke a cigar.

Thanks!

I quite cigars. I used to smoke the odd Cuban and those Brazilians Clint used to smoke in his spaghetti westerns. Velencias they were called as I recall. :-))