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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alexis Powell" data-source="post: 1728589" data-attributes="member: 5327">I guess it depends on what you mean by a tad less vigilant.  I usually clean lenses in the manner I learned through Nikon's recommendation a long time ago: I remove everything I can with blower and soft brush, sop with a bit of alcohol (ethanol, isopropanol, or similar such as Zeiss lens cleaner) or water or both, then gently remove/dry using fresh clean natural cotton balls, final polishing done very gently with cotton balls with maybe a bit of condensed breath.  In other words, nothing fancy.  In the field, I've been known to use a seemingly clean corner of a fleece garment (=essentially the same as a microfiber cloth) to gently lift off big drips of water or remove other distracting items.  After years of hard use in diverse situations, I don't think I've ever noticeably damaged a lens by cleaning it.  Maybe, with very close inspection, you could find a very few microfine scratches here and there, but they might be due to encounters with brush or other things.  Certainly much less than 1% degradation.  But I have seen binos and camera lenses that had 20%+ degradation. They look like they've been cleaned with a Brillo pad.  Abused.--AP</blockquote>