Bye bye, broken filter blues: Heliopan offers industry’s first drop protection warranty on UV filters

You've been looking forward to receiving your brand-new filter and it's finally arrived. You open up the package and start to screw it on to your lens. But then the unthinkable happens, you drop it and it cracks. Or perhaps you screw it on fine, but a few weeks later it is shattered when your camera gets an accidental knock.

Normally you would be out of luck and your money would be gone, but Heliopan recently announced that it is implementing a filter replacement warranty program, which it says is the first of its kind.

Now, there are some caveats. The warranty only applies to UV and Protection Filters and you can only use it a single time. If you drop and damage your replacement, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. To be covered, you need to have purchased your Heliopan filter directly from an authorized reseller from January 1, 2016 onward.

The president of Heliopan's US distributor, MAC Group, said of the announcement, "It's very exciting for us to provide our customers with another level of security when using Heliopan UV and Protection Filters. We're now finally able to protect our customers when our filters do their jobs and this is something we know will add value to the Heliopan brand."

If you have a damaged Heliopan UV or protection filter purchased this year, to activate your warranty you need to make your replacement request directly to the Heliopan Service Department and supply your damaged filter and proof of purchase from an authorized US reseller.

Heliopan offers many kinds of filters beyond UV and protective filters, so it will be interesting to see if their new warranty will eventually cover additional filters.

Heliopan UV Filters

(Seen via The Digital Picture. Index image uses a free broken glass Photoshop brush created by Obsidian Dawn.)