vignetting or shadow?

[wisp]

On a recent trip to Santa Cruz, CA, I took some photos at natural bridges at

sunset. One of them is below:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/5542669

 

In the upper right corner of the frame (and perhaps the lower right, difficult

to tell in the shadow) there appears to be vignetting.

 

The sun was almost at a right angle to me (on the right) at the horizon, so one

of my first thoughts (which I quickly discarded) was that I was seeing a shadow

from the lens hood - is this even possible? (it seems like that's what they are

designed to do and the light making up the photograph shouldn't be effected by

that, but maybe I am wrong here)

 

Any thoughts on what could be going on here? There is no trace of this effect

on the left side of the frame.

 

The lens is the Tokina 12-24 DX F4 @ 12mm with a Hoya SHMC UV(0) - I just added

the filter recently - although this lense is not supposed to vignette with a

standard filter, it looks like it does - I am seeing the same effect under

different lighting conditions (but only on that side). Is this a defect? I

just purchased the lense a few weeks ago.

 

Thanks in advance

[stemked]

Absolutely it can be a lens hood, a polarizer, etc. It is a bigger problem with wider lenses

[bruce_margolis]

Nice shot, Joshua. I have the same lens so I will offer my experience.....

 

Yeah, this can be a problem but I notice it only occassionally and only at the wide end. Weird, I don't see it all the time but when it's there, it is noticable. I tried to isolate the cause, i.e., filter, hood, light, etc. I really haven't come up with a perfect solution that works all the time.

 

One correction, this lens will vignette with a standard filter. Tokina recommends only 'slim' filters and there is definitely a reason for it. BTW, I use the Pro 1 S-HMC polarizer.

 

My suggestion... if it happens all the time and under all conditions, you need to consider that the lens could be defective. If you are like me and it happens just sometimes, keep experimenting to identify the cause but in the meantime, it is a small crop to keep an otherwise great photo.

[kuryan_thomas]

I usually see that when I was using my hat to shade the front element from the sun. I

assume you weren't doing that.

 

It is a nice shot anyway.

[bruce_margolis]

One more thing, Joshua. Another nuisance with the lens is that you can't use the hood when you use the in-camera flash. Well, you can use it but you will get reflection. That will show as a mark at the bottom of your shot.

 

Of course, all of this can be fixed in Photoshop but who wants the extra work.

[jimstrutz]

I don't get any vignetting with this lens and a normal filter, but I'm using it with a Canon camera. The Nikon has a slightly larger sensor (1.6x vs 1.5x crop). That could explain why some say the lens is fine with a normal filter and others say different.

 

Odd that it only gets one corner though. Looks like something's not centered. Nothings perfect, but this looks like quite a difference.

[wisp]

I may have figured this one out - it was really bugging me that only the right side (and mostly the upper right) was vignetting - a filter wouldn't do that...

 

So I looked at the lense and looked at the lense hood, which is a bayonet mount and is a bit 'difficult' to lock into place (it goes fine, but there is a reasonable amount of resistance to click into the locked position).

 

I did a test shot or two with the hood slightly out of the locked position (12mm, F4) - I got vignetting in that corner (the long part of the petal hood protrudes into the upper right corner - I bet I would also get the same vignetting in the bottom left, but I haven't done any shots where that corner wasn't in shadow). The same shot with the hood fully locked results in no vignetting (at least with my limited test shots from my computer desk).

 

So my current thinking is that this may have been the issue - the hood must have been slightly out of the fully locked position... damnit - I like that shot :) - time for some photoshop clone and feather...

 

Anyway, Bruce - you may want to check the hood. YMMV - I'll continue to check this out under different conditions.

 

Thanks for the responses.

[steve_dunn2]

<p>Yup, a misaligned hood was the first thing I thought of when I saw your picture with a sharply darker area in one corner but not another. You'd get the same thing in the opposite corner, but in this case that corner was already dark so darkening wouldn't be visible.</p>

 

<p>If you're going to get vignetting from using a non-slim filter on a lens that needs a slim filter, the effect should be the same on all four corners.</p>

[wisp]

I feel like Dan Quail.

 

For the past 2 weeks I have been spelling 'lens' as 'lense' - apparently it is an alternate (rare) spelling, but since it wasn't intentional, that hardly counts...

 

ah, potatoe/potato

 

thanks for all the comments - I learned something in photoshop fixing this and might remember to check the hood when I am shooting at 12mm :) - the fixed version is in my gallery.

[tommyinca]

I have a Tokina 12-24. You didn't rotate the hood all the way. This lens is very sensitive to that at 12mm, at lease mine is.

[savagesax]

The photo need some work on play! At this time play with layers and brind out your passion. Ansel Adams spent 8 or more hours in his darkroom trying to make the shots work with doding techinques. You have a babic image, play with it, make it GREAT.

[ShunCheung]

Joshua, you are shooting digital, so why don't you shoot a few test shots at 12mm, one with the hood, one with the filter and one without anything on the lens. It should take literally seconds to figure out what the problem is.

[wisp]

I did do the few seconds test - I agree with averyone: it is the hood not being fully rotated.

 

The reason I didn't start at this test was because I got sidetracked by the fact that when I first saw the effect, the sun was at right angles to the lense and seemed like could have been casting heavy shadows - I realize now that was silly and that is exactly what the hoods are designed for, however hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.

 

Thanks for all the information.

[matthew_newton]

As everyone mentioned, vignetting. I ended up getting that on a cheap 28-80mm f/3.5 lens I bought about 6 months ago for my olympus om-1. It was also corner vignetting in the upper right and lower left hand corners. It did not change with aperature, but it did change with focal distance (none at close focus, bad at infinity). Of course in your case it is probably due to the lens hood. Mine it was shody lens and possibly off canter lens elements as it deffinitely was not an external obstruction (and occured at all focal lengths).