In the beginning, there was only film. Over time, as our technological advances grew leaps and bounds, digital photography was born. Almost everything in digital photography today can be traced back to film traditions. One such tradition has been the cause of a great division between photographers in the modern age: UV Cut filters. Some photographers never let their lenses go without one, while others refuse to use them entirely. But who is right?

Let’s start with a little background on the origins of UV filters and their purpose. UV filters were initially created in the days of film to block out ultraviolet light. This was often necessary with old film cameras, especially in bright outdoor conditions, because film is extremely sensitive to UV light. Unless it was blocked from reaching the film stock, UV light would create a bluish haze in the image. Nowadays, modern digital sensors have become rather insensitive to UV light due to their internal UV/IR cut hot mirrors.

We previously looked into whether or not UV Cut filters actually help modern camera sensors, and we concluded that these filters are, essentially, redundant for their original intended purpose. You can read more about what we found through our testing here. We also had to actively dig for lenses that lack an anti-UV coating when we did our write-up of UV Photography Compatible Lenses, meaning that any UV light your sensor doesn’t block, the coatings on your lens are likely to do the job. So if modern digital cameras don’t need UV Cut filters for image quality, what are they used for today?