Cleaning High End Camera Filters With A Tooth Pick...

Lenses and filters always seem so fragile. Yet in trying to clean a Hoya Cir-polarizer we found out that they are really quite tough. Some way some how, a spot of some unknown kind appeared on what we thought was a pristine 67mm filter. We sold the filter on ebay and then discovered the filter had a spot on it as we packed it up to ship. You could only see the spot from one side if you held the filter in just the right light at just the right angle. But still, we could not ship the filter in that condition.

"These filters are tougher than I ever would have imagined. "

Our first attempt was to use the kind of cloth that ships with glasses and get a little bit breathy, and breath on the filter. That cleaned most of the filter but not the spot. Canon brand anti-fog lens cleaner helped a tiny bit. Purified water failed, but helped a little and gave even a little more encouragement. One factor we kept seeing was was if the liquid or cloth touched the metal, spots would appear that were hard to get off. They would come off, with effort though.

So what else should we try? We tried Everclear alcohol as a solvent. This took most of the spot off but not all. Still there was that nasty edge metal area. Next we took the lens out of the metal. This allowed us to wash the filter with eco (7th Generation) dish soap. Wow, that helped a lot but the spot could still be seen but the edge no longer had that nasty staining residue. Next we tried more alcohol for a longer duration. By now it became clearer that the filter was tougher than we imagined. But is it really tough? Alright, with a shipping dead line to meet and not much to lose we took it further, by using a thumb nail. You could feel that something was on the surface. The thumb nail helped little more. A brief search revealed these filters coatings are said to be harder than metal. How about a round wooden tooth pick? Metal is said to be harder than wood right? We used a round tooth pick to try to rub off the spot. The tooth pick helped a bit also and did not scratch the filter at all! Next for even more abrasion, we snapped the tooth pick in half and used the rough end. Helped even more and still did not scratch.

Although we did not get the spot completely out, we brought the filter back to where we could use it and learned a lot about cleaning filters. We still did not feel right to ship the filter with the very faint spot that remained.

Links:

1Check out Hoya Cir-Polarizer for more info...

2Check out Hoya Polarizer on Amazon for more info...