Dilip Simha's blog world

I own a Sony DSC H5 camera since 2 years. It’s very tempting to capture sunrise and sunset pictures. But the harmful UV rays pose threat to the lens and more damage to our eyes!
UV rays consists of 2 parts: UVA and UVB rays.
UVA rays are present from sunrise to sunset, irrespective of clouds, glasses or any other transparent/translucent medium.
UVB rays are present only when we are directly exposed to sun. Of course there is ozone layer protecting us from it, but some amount of light still reaches earth and that’s enough to cause us long lasting damage.

So while capturing sunrise or sunset photos, be careful not to over expose the camera lens after sunrise or before sunset.
You can avoid much damage by putting a UV filter in front of the lens.

UV filters reflect the UV rays and hence avoids burning of camera lens and and other sensitive materials close to the lens.
Cost of UV filters depend on the size of the lens.
My Sony DSC H5 camera has a 58 mm lens and hence I need a 58 mm filter.
It cost me 250Rs. (FOTO circle, Chikpete, Bangalore).
There are other varieties too. (100, 250, 400Rs).
But for a average camera like mine, I feel 250Rs is fine.

Most of the lens available in the market are of this size itself.
Even lens for some of the DSLR cameras like: Nikon, Canon are 58 mm in size.

Polarize filters do not protect any UV rays. They only avoid perpendicular rays without seeing color, caste or religion of the rays!

Anyway they cost 750Rs for my camera. (58mm).
Maintaining polarize filter is a huge pain.
It should not be exposed for a long time, because dust particales can cause small scratches to the filter and that will fail to filter perpendicular rays, thus rendering the filter useless.

So loading and unloading the filter every now and then is lot of discomfort and hence I didn’t buy it.