Here is a case of not doing the basics. I have a little 40mm pancake lens from Canon that I put on my 5D Mk II to make it lighter and because it's the same focal length on a full frame as the lovely little 20mm Panasonic is on my Micro 4/3 cameras. The lenses even look identical if scale is taken into account. I have had great problems with flare with this lens when there is a light source in the frame. It's sharp with the light behind me but flares like crazy, as in this picture. I always put a filter on my lenses, usually one from B+W because they are so optically neutral. Well, I cleaned the front of the filter and the back element of the lens, all very clear to the naked eye. Went out and took more pictures, same flare problem. I was about to write the lens off when I decided to try one last cleaning. I took the filter off and it looked clean. I held it up to a light source and it flared like crazy. There was a clear, but guaze-like film on the filter. I couldn't see it when it was on the lens. So I cleaned it and put it back on the lens and voila! no more flare. I went through all of my 4/3 lenses and all of the B+W filters had the film. They must be shipped with it on as a protectant with the assumption that any thinking photographer would check and clean a new filter before installing it.
If you get lazy, you pay.
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