50mm 2.0 HC lens hood recommendation please.

[david_charles_oconnor]

I have searched forum, but maybe not intelligently enough. What is

the preferred lens hood for this vintage 50? I plan on using one slim

filter in front of hood, would prefer screw-in. Thank you for your

expertise in advance. Given the screw thread size, there must be a

slew of possibilities.

[steve_levine]

The "clip on" metal classic is an HS6.There are also rubber and metal screw on types(HR2 & HN6).In the "Nikon system handbook"(Peterson)there are charts with these sizes.It does seem like some of these numbers changed over time too.

[cappoldt]

I've got the HS-6, works very well.

[tristanlaing]

Does one even need a lens hood on a 50mm F2? I mean, the lens is very recessed, is flare a problem?

[david_kelly1]

The screw in rubber collapsible HR-1, still available at B&H

unless the recent fire destroyed their stock, was made for

manual 50s of the AI era and is slightly less bulky than HR-2

[lex_jenkins]

As Tristan said, the front element of the 50mm f/2 is deeply recessed within the lens barrel, providing plenty of flare resistance.

 

OTOH, if you plan to use filters that negates the advantage of the recessed front element and a hood would be desirable. Whenever I use filters I use an ordinary generic plastic hood that fits into the filter threads. This plastic hood doesn't flare out annoyingly, as collapsible rubber hoods usually do.

[hil3]

HS-6 is the proper metal shade and works well. Lose the filter [flame shields up] though, unless you are shooting in a rough environment. It can only degrade your images. The 50/2 HC is my favorite lens on my F2AS. Instead of the lens hood, lately I've been using a K4 ring spacer. Got the idea from some one here on this forum. Works great and it is compact - it's metal, it screws on, it protects against nicks and bangs to the front screw mount, it takes a metal screw on lens cap (or even the crappy pop-off plastic ones), and gives you added flare protection (which you would negate with a filter in place).

[lex_jenkins]

Yeh, a filter ring from a useless filter makes a pretty decent shade for wide angles that are difficult to find usable shades for. Pop out the glass and you'll have at least a little extra help. That's pretty much all there is to the "shades" that come with some of the Voigtlander ultra wides - just thin rings.

 

With my 24mm f/2.5 Tamron Adaptall I had to do something like this. The shape of the front of some Tamron Adaptalls is so damned weird, they defy the use of some filters and shades because they interfere with the full range of focus. I found a cheap, nasty collapsible rubber shade with a thin enough plastic ring to work with the lens. I cut the rubber ring back a little at a time until there was no more vignetting.

[astral]

Also in another thread -

 

I use a heck of a lot of slr lenses from 20 to 300mm alongside some Leica gear. I find that some manufacturers make rather generous allowances for angle of view so that vignetting is not a problem with filters (though some don?t!) But this often results in shallow hoods that don't give the optimal shading or vignetting control that I may want.

 

My solution is to use any suitable second-hand hood, often via a step-up ring, often giving me better proportioned and more effective hoods for certain applications. To check for vignetting I use a piece of ground glass at the film gate. This often shows that a hood for, say, a much longer lens will give far better shading than a more conventionally sized hood, even with filters attached. I then simply label the hoods for each of the lenses they suit. Step-up rings allow me to use the same hood for a number of different lenses, etc, saving space in the holdall.

 

The ?down-side? is that some hoods look enormous on some lenses: the ?up-side? is that I rarely get flare or ghosting in tricky situations - and I save money.

 

Where cheap hoods shout out their humble origins I may ink-out the engravings/printing using a black marker pen, or may even ink-in the markings, in red or blue, to make the hood look more classy! Automotive 'black crackle' or silver spray paint jobs (on metal hoods) look great too, and baking the paint job in an oven for a while hardens the paint nicely. Plastic hoods can easily be cut down to length if needed, and can clean-up well with metal polish. Such d-i-y jobs cost pennies, take about 10 minutes and look like $50 accessories (for those who think that's important!).

 

Money saved (??$$) over brand-named dedicated hoods goes on film or in the air-fare money-box.

 

Alan Clayton

Nottingham. England