any advice on attatching filters and brands?

[drewbird]

I am looking (finally) to upgrade my old Oly digital (Camedia C-2500L, great camera but its time to move on to somthing that has more than 2.5 megapix...) and have read great things about the C-8080. I can't find anything indicating that Olympus will be replacing it, so I'm going to try to find one still avaliable on the net, but the other thing that I really want to do with it is play with filters - polarised, grad, and possibly infrared... I tried wading through all of this stuff on the net, but am still a little confused. have heard that it is possible to just attatch the filters direct to the lens with out the tube?...
So my questions are basically is it possible to attatch the filters directly to the lens? If possible, is it advised? what is the better way to go (cannot currently afford any additional lenses but might be able to in the future) - with a tube or without? if with the tube, is the raynox better than the olympus? and also, which filter brands are okay? I saw some stuff about Quantaray, but they seem to have very few reviews and most are of equally mixed opinion...
any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks,
drewfish

[rdegro]

I still use my Oly C3020Z frequently. I bought a Kenko adapter tube 41>52mm and then an adapter ring to raise it to 58mm which is the filter size I use on my Sony F828 and my Canon 20D. It was cheap and I can use my filters on all three.

:D