FWIW, even most of that "scratch" can probably be removed. It does not look like the glass has been extensively damaged, what it looks like is whatever got against the lens left a streak. There might be some scratches, or there might not.
Clean first with a bulb blower to remove most of the dust, then follow with an alcohol-based lens cleaner like Eclipse. If there are spots that Eclipse doesn't touch, try dampening a lens tissue with distilled water, cleaing with that, and following with the cleaning with eclipse again. Don't dry the lens surface in between the water cleaning and the eclipse cleaning.
The above will get rid of both water-soluble soils and alcohol-soluble soils. There isn't much that normally gets on a lens that isn't soluble in one or the other.
If your lens sees a lot of rough environments, perhaps a UV filter is not a bad idea. I don't use them personally, but I don't regularly shoot in very dirty environments.
BTW, even if there are small scrates left after you remove that streak, chances are their impact on image quality will be minimal. What you'd probably see is a drop in contrast.
Message edited by author 2006-03-17 09:53:19.
|
