Customer Reviews

B+W 77mm Slim-Line Circular Polarizer

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

i've been using the filter for just a short time now on my efs 10-22 lens on the rebel xt, and it was certainly worth the money. the pictures come out with deep rich colors, beautiful. no vignetting. threads on and off very easily. the slim mount doesn't have any front threads, so it won't accept a lens cap. it does come with a plastic cap, but it doesn't fit tightly, would only be practical in a camera case, not for walking around.

For the price I paid, I expected a lot more. Yes, the glass is super fine quality, which is what you want in a filter. There is no point putting a piece of cheap glass on a $2000 lens to ruin it for you.

The thing is, I didn't really notice *that* much of a difference from my old Tiffen filter, which is $90 cheaper. The one thing that really got to me about the B&W filter is the fact that you can't put your lens cap over the filter, which you can do with the Tiffen. I found this to be very annoying as I was traveling and wanted to protect that nice piece of glass, so I had to unscrew it, put it back in its nice little case, and then put my lens cap on before I could get going on. This was too time consuming for me, and I ended up missing a lot of great shots.

If you have quality glass, like the Canon L series, then you need quality filters. the B+W are made from ground optical glass, not a piece of plain glass like as you see in the tiffen and hoyas filters (even the expensive ones are still cheap grade glass). Only B+W and Heliopan put the time and $$ into making filters that are designed to be used with your quality lenses and not distort and reduce the optical quality of them. I have 2 MRC, 1 Kaesemann, and 1 slim one, and I love them, HOWEVER the slim one you cant put a normal lens cap on it, and that is a major pain!! I have a Heliopan as well, and I prefer the B+W a little bit more as its a brass ring and not aluminum and thus does not bind up as easy, and thats important when you want to change filters quickly! But the Heliopan slim model you can still put a normal Canon lens cap on it, as I have done it many times on my 17-40mm F4 L series lens before I got the B+W. If you use a cheap filter on a pro grade lens, you are wasting your money, on the lens and the filter as the filter just hurt your image quality, and thus you lowered the quality of your lens! In filters, like lenses, you get what you pay for!!!

I shoot in all kinda of weather conditions, from sunny and warm, to windy and cold or snowy, and I have never had any major issues with any of my B+W filters acting up! I prefer the MRC or even the Kaesemann over the entry level one, but even their entry level one is ground glass, so you still get a great quality filter at that price point.

I needed a "Slim" polarizing filter for ultra-wide lenses with 82mm diameter. I faced the following problems:

1. The cap is useless and will fall off almost instantly
2. The filter itself will pop-off the lens at least once a day... I tried to be extra careful and i have many filters and this is the only one with the problem. (BTW: I used it on a 10-20 mm / 3.5 Sigma..)
3. For the price, I expected a nice pouch instead of the cheap bulky box!

The positive:
1. It is slim: Works well on an ultra-wide lens
2. A polarizing filter that does the job
3. Glass and frame look well built

A polarizing filter is an essential accessory to keep in your bag. The thin mount lets you do wide angle images without vignetting at 18mm (in my case) on a digital sensor not full frame. This one comes with its own lens cap because of the thin mount. Yours probably will not hold. The cap says Schneider (an optical glass company known for high quality glass), so I expect that this filter is made with this glass. Of course, the B+W name is also a name known for high quality filters so I wouldn't expect anything less. Priced at a resellers price, (at the time that I purchased it), I feel that this filter is a real bargain. I would recommend it highly to anyone looking for this level of filter. Here is the link for the product. B + W 62mm Circular Polarizer Wide Angle Slim Mount Coated Glass Filter

The first one I purchased worked like a charm, even though the custom B+W lens cap would fall off while stored inside my camera bag (FYI a normal lens cap will not fit over this filter) thus the filter apparantly received a few scratches from scraping other equipment inside my bag. Now, after shelling out an extra hundred bucks to replace the first one (which was almost brand new) its identical replacement has a colder blue cast in the glass... They don't even match!!!

So, besides the useless lenscap which never stays on, I seriously question the scratch resistance of the glass and B+W's quality control, hence the two different colored filters I have sitting right in front of me. I know B+W is supposed to have a great reputation, but my own opinion has been swayed. I just hope I don't have any problems with the return of this item.

First of all, anyone who is looking into buying this must know that you only need this filter if you have a full frame camera like Canon 5D MKII. The reason you need this slim filter instead of a regular polarizing filter on a full frame is because on a lens like Canon 24-105mm L lens, you get black edges at the corners at 24 mm. You see the tall circular edges of the filter in your image on a full frame camera. With a slim filter, the edges are not so tall and hence you don't see them in your image. However, a big drawback is that you cannot attach the regular lens cap on such a filter. The lens cap that is provided with this filter is really bad as has been indicated by other users. Since it has no threads, it just keeps falling off. Sometimes it becomes such a big nuisance that I simply don't feel like using the polarizer. I can't believe that they could not come up with a better lens cap than the one they supplied. Also, on Canon 24-105mm L lens, you still get vignetting at 24mm. I have also noticed that the filter sometimes gets unscrewed while you are rotating the polarizer. Couple of times the filter got fully unscrewed and it almost fell. If you tighten it too much, then good luck getting this filter off the lens. Due to these reasons, I always try to avoid using this filter as much as possible and would not recommend this filter.

If you have a crop framed camera like Canon 40D, 50D, etc., vignette due to filter is not a problem and you do not need this polarizer. You will be better served buying a regular polarizer on which you easily fit the lens cap.

Works well. Not as good as I have expected. It still can not remove 100% of reflection on the windows when trying to shoot something inside the windows. The lens cap is not easy to use. It falls off super easy, especially inside my camera bag. I have to remove both CPL and UV filter to remove CPL from my lens, which is not so handy.

B+W is a brand with a reputation for quality. As I have started taking my photography more seriously I decided that I needed a few higher quality filters. The slim stature of this filter makes it great for wide angle shots where vignetting can be problematic. The only issue for me is that you can't stack another filter on top of this one because there is no threading, but all in all I rarely need to do something like that. I highly recommend this filter.

I was really excited to get my hands on a quality B+W filter to see what it could do compared to my 20+ year old Vivitar c-pol and man was I disappointed. Pictures look desaturated and the effect of the polarizer isn't right. Skies became more gray and reflections weren't reduced in the same fashion as before. Some colors shifted pretty badly in pictures. Overall I feel like this was a bad purchased and I'm looking for another filter. I bought the slim version to reduce vignetting, but not at the expense of picture quality.