I was wondering what peoples thoughts are on protective filters for lenses. I have a hoya hd protective on my zeiss, nothing on my canon 70-300mm but it doesn't get used as much.
Reason for getting it was I shoot a lot on the coast/inland etc so I thought it made sense as over time it would accumulate small scratches & if it got bad I could easily replace it with a new one. As I was cleaning it the other day it got me thinking, are they really necessary? Would small scratches ever show up in landscape shots if printed large? Or are they more intended for protection in case you drop it?
My zeiss lens hood is metal & I can hardly bend it so it already has pretty good protection. Apparently this hoya protector doesn't affect picture quality which was one of my initial main worries before getting one. If you had a really expensive lens like a otus would you get a good quality protector filter.....