Most pictures taken now are made with digital cameras.  While some prefer film, and film does look and behave differently than digital, there is no denying that it is much easier to shoot digital.  I don't have any statistics, but I would guess 99%+ is digital now.

This got me wondering recently about the usefulness of those UV haze and Skylight filters.  Since I have a spectrometer where I can measure filter transmission, I bought UV Haze filters from Canon, Agfaphoto, Hoya, Alture, Gobe, Tiffen, Polaroid and B+W to see what their transmission looks like.  I also measured a typical digital cameras IR Cut Filter (ICF) that is installed on all stock color digital cameras.  An ICF is required because the red, green and blue dyes that make up the Color Filter Array (CFA) become transparent in the infrared (IR) and, without the ICF, the picture colors wouldn't look right.

It may be hard to read the graph here, but the black line is the camera's ICF.  The black line cuts off around 420nm with is a deep blue color range.  Notice how every other trace is to the left of the camera's ICF.  The closest is Canon UV Haze Sharp Cut at 370nm.  Many of the filters were approaching 300nm which is lower than what a normal camera lens can see.  Most lenses cutoff off between 340nm and 400nm.  To see down around 300nm, you need a special lens like the $7,000 Jenoptik 60mm APO and $8,000 Systems 7 UV Nikkor 105mm copy.  You also need a camera like our monochrome converted full spectrum cameras because the CFA and Microlenses block most of the UV light - or a scintillation coated sensor (topic for another newsletter).