Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Jim; Having worked in several camera stores, I can tell you the justification for the filter. PROFIT. Most of the sales people lament that if you sell a camera, the amount of commission is determined by theprofit margin. The margin for cameras is very small in the competative market; the margin on a Nikon F3 body( I looked it up!), is about 30 dollars, and the salesmen here get 20% of the margin as a commission- about 6 bucks! If they sell the customer a battery, filter, case and cleaning outfit, their commission more than quadruples! It's regretable, but most salesmen hate to lose the profit of a filter sale and come up with gloom and doom stories of how they protect the lens. Unfortunately, you are right- an impact severe enough to damage the solidly built lens will usually do in the body as well! Besides, glass is inherently UV protective; Zeiss made very expensive lenses with quartz elements for UV photography simply because glass blocks most UV radiation. Dan'l