Why Do Shooters Put B & W Filters on a Spotting Scope?

[centershot]

What does this accomplish?

 

[VA_XTC_Shooter]

Is there a filter to enhance mirage??

 

[K9TXS]

Some people put a filter on just to help protect the front element from being damaged. Cheaper to replace a filter than the element. Others change the filter due to current conditions where they're shooting. Kind of like different color shooting glasses for the current conditions. I have a UV filter on mine just to protect the front element.

 

[rkittine]

All of my expensive photo lenses get a UV Filter installed to protect the lens and coating. Also enhances blues.

Bob

 

[Lesloan]

A yellow filter will enhance contrast on a bright, sunny day. At least that's what it does on a camera with B&W film and I think it'd do the same on a spotter. That's also why shooting glasses often have yellow lenses. On a camera, the red filter brings out the cloud's appearance and darkens the sky on B&W film. Back in the day, a lot of B&W motion pictures supposedly of night scenes were actually taken in broad daylight using a red filter w/o opening the aperture up 2 f-stops to compensate for light loss. It's been years, but I seem to recall that a green filter did the same thing with the sky as a red one, only less so. A skylight (UV) filter did nothing with B&W film, but filtered out excess blues with color film. And with both, it gave the lens a bit of protection as K9TXS said. I used to always keep a skylight filter on my camera lenses just for protection.