How fragmented are lens filter thread sizes?

Pick any two lenses that fit the same camera. 87.5% of the time they take different screw-in filters. Across the 158 lenses whose front thread we have verified against manufacturer specs, on 5 mounts, there are 15 distinct diameters — and the single most common one, 67mm, covers only 23% of them.

That is the whole reason step-up rings and magnetic filter systems exist. It is also why "just buy a polarizer" is bad advice: a polarizer fits one thread, and the odds are against your next lens sharing it.

Fragmentation by mount

"Most common" is the modal diameter on that mount and the share of that mount's verified lenses carrying it; where two diameters tie, both are shown. Even the winner is a minority everywhere — on Canon RF it is 32%.

Every diameter in the index

39mm (2) · 43mm (4) · 46mm (8) · 49mm (7) · 52mm (11) · 55mm (12) · 58mm (8) · 62mm (16) · 67mm (36) · 72mm (13) · 77mm (20) · 82mm (14) · 86mm (1) · 95mm (5) · 112mm (1)

What this means if you own more than one lens

Two honest options. Buy filters for the largest thread you own and step down to the rest with adapter rings — one good polarizer instead of four mediocre ones. Or buy a magnetic or square-holder system once and adapt every lens into it. The largest thread on your mount is in the table above; that is the size to buy.

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Method

Every thread diameter here is a published manufacturer spec, joined brand-strictly to our lens index. A lens whose thread we could not uniquely verify is omitted, not estimated — so 158 is a floor, and the fragmentation figure is computed only over lenses we can stand behind. Pair probability is computed within each mount and then pooled across mounts, over 2,600 same-mount lens pairs. Lenses with no front thread at all (bulbous front elements taking rear gel filters) are excluded rather than counted as a size.

Thread sizes verified 2026-08-28 against community-maintained per-mount lens specification tables (compiled from the manufacturers' own spec sheets), matched brand-strictly to our lens index. Lenses whose thread we could not uniquely verify are left out rather than guessed — coverage grows as verified data lands.

Per-size lists: every verified filter size.