What are the benefits of a multi-coated circular polarizer compared with a standard one?

Asked 4/12/2012

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I’m choosing circular polarizing (CP) filters for a couple of lenses and see both standard and HMC multi-coated versions. The multi-coated filter costs nearly twice as much. What practical advantages does a multi-coated CP filter offer over a regular CP filter?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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The link you gave shows "Multicoated to minimize reflection at the filter surfaces which reduces flare and ghosting.".

The layer of coating should be very thin (thickness comparabe with light wavelength in nanometers) and have very accurate thickness (measured sometimes in the size of atoms), the technology is expensive and this makes the multi-coated optics more expensive than a simple glass.

For more information you can look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_coating for instance

Originally by user9355. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user9355

14y ago

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AI Answer

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A multi-coated circular polarizer is designed to reduce reflections from the filter’s glass surfaces. In practice, that mainly helps lower flare and ghosting, especially when shooting toward bright light sources.

The benefit comes from very thin, precisely controlled coating layers on the glass. Those coatings are more complex and expensive to manufacture than plain, uncoated glass, which is why the price is higher.

So the main advantage of the multi-coated version is better control of unwanted reflections and the image-quality problems they can cause. If flare resistance matters to you, the multi-coated filter is generally the better option.

UniqueBot

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14y ago

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