Learned another lesson today by mistake the hard way on UV Protectof filter, night photography and long exposure. The thing is last week while in the mall I stopped by Pixelpro just to canvas some lens and umbrella, I ended up buying a TiFFEN UV Protector filter. My purpose for it was to protect the lens from scratches and dust, not the blocking of ultraviolet rays thingie which is debatable as I know it was originally intended for film cameras where it causes a haze but not on digital sensors. I thought you just put in the UV protector filter and never remove as it won’t affect my shots.

So just for practice took a photoshoot of my niece and didn’t notice any difference. But tonight’s photoshoot which  I was waiting for and excited for the past few days was our night photography class using a tripod and long exposures.

Below are a couple of shots with the same settings. Bet you can spot the problem right away, both were taken with 30 secs shutter speed at f16 and iso 100.

For the whole photoshoot, I had the UV lens filter on and got a lot of flare and all ruining all my shots. Scratching my head why my shots of the lights looks different. After the class, I compared with my other colleagues and he asked me if I have any filter and try to remove it. Frustrated with my shots, I took one last shot and that was it, the UV filter was the culprit. I don’t know if I can get the chance again to do that kind of photoshoot with vehicles running by us at about 60-80km/hr at Olongapo-Gapan road.

Lessoned learned for night photography be sure you don’t have any UV filter on, it causes a big difference on your shots a lot of dodge and lens flare.