Lens hood for the ultimate cheap-skate.

[dan flanders]

To be optimally effective a lens hood should be the same shape as the camera's format. A cylindrical hood that is deep enough to COMPLETELY protect against flare will cause lighting fall-off at the corners. If it is shallow enough not to caue corner fall-off it will not protect against light entering the lens above, below, and to the sides of the image. Depending upon the shape of the image format up to 45% of the light entering a circular hood will have no effect upon defining the image but will bounce around inside the lens causing flare and loss of contrast.

[studor13]

Dan, Thanks for these extra details. Don*t know if your reply was coincidental, but it seems to directly address a problem I am having with my most recent photo posted into my portfolio. There is hardly ever an evening here where it is completely clear, but this was one of the clearest. All my sunset shots have this slight haze which I just can*t get rid of. It would have been great to have made a comparison of the shot below with and without what you refer to as a correctly formatted hood to see the differences in contrast.

 

As I get more experienced, I find that paying attention to a lot of extra details are needed to make only minor improvements, so your tips are very much appreciated.

[Jochen_S]

Andy check this side out: http://www.lenshoods.co.uk/nikon.php they have printable patterns for lenshoods. I'd take a flower shaped one. I won't inkjet or laser it black. Maybe you can find some ancient recipies for non glossy printers ink, and mix the pigments mentioned there (charcoal?) into some matte paint. The best paint I came across now was in spraycans and special made to paint exhaust tubes ore engines. Glueing some black velvet rugs into the hood is also a good idea.

 

As others mentioned: a good hood fits the angel of view a s tight as possible and is extremely non reflective in the inside. I don't believe in brandnames, when it comes to lenshoods. My Linhof kit has one hood for 90, 150 and 270mm. That's probably better than nothing but surely not the best imaginable.

 

Mamiya and others used to offer one hood suitable for a few different focal lengths. Talking zooms I doubt whoever constructs them makes the included hoods fit as tight as possible with any focal length. I also doubt extractable hoods like you find at older telephoto lenses to be perfect when you are using these lenses with filters.

 

I believe in lenshoods in general. On my endless to-do-list making a hood for my FF14mm on cropfactor digital has a similar important place as building hoods which shade the viewing lenses of my TLRs too.

[studor13]

Jochen, A good thing you dropped by. I was just about to give up on the idea of making my own hoods as I had thought that protecting the lens was more important than what I was trying to do in the first place. That is, to work on as many factors as possible to get the best image. Since a lens hood is one of the factors on the list of the more experienced shooters, I will test a variety as suggested by yourself and a few others. Thanks also for the link.

[jon_noble]

Not cheap-skate enough really.

 

Found this at a blog called photocritic

 

http://www.lenshoods.co.uk/

[Jochen_S]

The protective aspect of a hood is surely important. Recently I dropped a Sigma zoom from a fridge to the hard floor, the original hood got damaged but the lens seems to have survived. Similar experiences with Tamron lenses ended with damaged hood threads and many hoodless beater lenses have dinged filter threads.

 

OTOH: If you make hoods from cardbord (400g/sqm?) they should be able to take some impact. The plastic bottle conversion mentioned in the first link here even seems better. You probably can gain weather protection by painting the outside of cardboard hoods.

 

With zooms you always have the trouble with a multitude of moving elements. If they don't wear out (happened to at least 3 of my consumer lenses) they are also easier to damage than good sturdy primes, so rather soft hoods are a quite good idea. Too solid ones might damage the lens.