Photo distortion question

[Martin Naef]

On 15.12.2010 01:31, Andrew Tarpinian wrote:
> Cool, thanks everyone, I just wanted to make sure it was not a
> "digital" screw up, and something I was doing that I should avoid.

Nope, I think you're fine. It's worth looking out for such unwanted 
effects though, and move the camera position slightly or work with 
lights to avoid it.

> Yea have a filter, mostly to just protect the lens, it can be such a
> pain in the ass sometimes though with reflections.

That's exactly the reason why I stopped using them. Reflections and 
playing havoc with the autofocus - I observed both effects. There's a 
lot of discussion in online forums on the benefit of protection filters, 
but the conclusions seems to gravitate towards avoiding them unless 
you're in harsh conditions. It's not terribly expensive to replace a 
scratched front element in a lens, while a filter that doesn't degrade 
image quality isn't exactly cheap.

Martin