The Care & Feeding of Lenses

[andygates]

Specifically flying fisheye lenses.  I'm about to spring for such a beastie, and it kinda flies eyeball-forward.  Me, cliffs, beaches: sadness will visit.

So, what's the drill for protecting a fisheye lens? Can you put a clear filter over the front of a fisheye and does the angle matter (I sense a 3d-printing adapter project!).  And embarrassingly, as I've always been a "rub it with your pocket lining" kind of vile troll, what's the drill for cleaning?

[mike]

There's no filter thread on my fisheye, and I'm pretty sure anything *I* made to fit over the front would make the images much worse than a bit of dust or the occasional scratch.

Buy a cleaning cloth and some cleaning fluid and go at it after every use (or just before every use with a t-shirt, more likely...)

[Biggsy]

Same advice for all lenses:

Use a suitable hood all the time if you can.  (I know they can only be minimal for fisheyes, but still it'll prevent some bumps and scrapes).

Clean, only when dirty, with a microfibre cloth or Lenspen. 

[andygates]

Well, someone already makes a "petal" hood (or at least offers the shapefile up for printing), so that's a goer then.

Thx folks

[tonycollinet]

Bebop I'm thinking.

I'd considered one of those (and was also contemplating 3d printed holder with glass/poly filter over the lens) - but am now waiting to see how these turn out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1719668770/cyphy-lvl-1-drone-reinvented-for-performance-and-c

[rafletcher]

And while your printing the hood, why not print a cap that slips over it for when the lens is off the camera?

[hellymedic]

We have found 'spectacle cleaning spray' leaves droplet residue on equipment and much prefer plain 70% isopropyl alcohol.

[Pickled Onion]

Standard advice is never touch the glass and clean the dust off with compressed air. If it does get anything on it, use disposable lens tissues and rub across the lens rather than round and round in circles.

[Charlotte]

Fisheyes and extreme wide angle lenses are a bastard to get protective filters for.  Flying in the face of what most pros do (which is not to bother and let them get dirty) I tend to run UV filters on most of my glass because I'm a twitchy anal retentive, but I've never even tried for fisheyes.

The reason most pros don't bother with UV filters is that in the real world, a dirty lens really doesn't have that much effect on your image quality...

http://petapixel.com/2011/06/16/how-dust-and-damage-on-lenses-affect-image-quality/
http://petapixel.com/2015/07/02/how-much-does-a-scratch-affect-the-quality-of-a-lens/

[nicknack]

a dirty lens really doesn't have that much effect on your image quality...

Not so much effect on image quality perhaps but I've got 2 compacts each with a small scratch on the front element. If I'm shooting even vaguely into the light I'll get a ghost of some sort on both of them.