Dancing green lights with UV filter
 

I've seen this mentioned before, but I thought I would bring it up again.
I am using a clear UV filter in front of MY VX2100. When shooting candles or pinpoint lights, I get the dancing green bugs surrounding the light source. I was going to keep my filter on to protect my lens, but now I think I will only put it on for high risk situations (i.e. outdoors).
Does this happen with all UV filters ?

Ezra

Is your UV filter multi-coated? Those are supposed to reduce unwanted reflections. I remove filters if they are not needed. Outdoors in wet or dusty environments would be a good place to put them back on. Careful cleaning of lenses with the appropriate cleaning equipment won't be a serious problem with your camera assuming you are careful. Some people aren't careful with their camera, so they should keep the UV filter in place.

There is always risk involved with bringing a camera into an interesting place to shoot. A good case and careful handling will prevent damage better than a UV filter. The damaged lenses I have seen have dents as well as scratches. I have never seen a lens with a nice barrel and significantly scratched glass.

In these situations, turn off your image stabilization. The dancing is caused by reflections off the stabilizer's optical elements in the lens. This won't get rid of the spots but they will be stationary and much less noticable.

Both the Ms make good points. Do check to see if your UV is multi-coated though Ezra. It certainly is important that any front element has to have the very best multi-coating you can buy, and if you've added a filter, that then becomes this all-important front element.

tom.

I can't believe I forgot to mention the image stabilizer! Doh!

That's the thing see, Marcus. A technology so transparent that it only requires a v'finder icon to tell you it's turned OFF very often gets forgotten about.