Most expensive lenses include a lens hood. For cheaper lenses, you must order a lens hood separately. Is a hood so important that you have to use it or what can you do without such an accessory? Let’s take a look at the hoods a bit in this article.
Do you have a lens hood for your lens? If you buy an expensive lens, you can find one in the box. For cheaper lenses, you must purchase a lens separately as an accessory. The original ones are usually quite expensive. Fortunately, yes third-party sunshades has a much friendlier price tag. However, you must be careful when choosing a third-party lens hood. If you buy the wrong one, it can lead to a very serious condition of the texture.
What are sunshade lenses good for?
As the name suggests, a lens hood will shield the lens, especially from horizontal light. This could be sunlight, but it could also be a street light, a car light, someone’s flashlight, or any other light source.
Light from this direction can cause reflections inside the lens, commonly known as flare. Depending on the lens, these light spots can become very distracting. It can even ruin your photos completely. The lens hood helps prevent flare.
Some photographers don’t realize that the hood is only effective if the light source is directly outside the frame. If the light source is inside the frame, the hood won’t help. In other words, if you have the sun, a street lamp, or someone else’s light in your photo, you may still experience annoying flare.
A sunshade lens has more benefits
A lens hood shields the lens from light sources outside the frame. If there’s an overcast sky or when there’s no light source nearby, you’d think a hood isn’t needed. But the hood may have more benefits. It will provide some physical protection to your front lens element. It will also provide some shielding against rain and snowfall.
When a sunshade lens is a nuisance
There are cases when the lens hood cannot be used at all or it can be a nuisance to place it on the lens. The most obvious situation is probably with the use of a filter system. You must remove the hood completely before the filter can be placed.
Some filter systems provide a hood of their own. Usually, they are quite large and cumbersome to use. LucrOid . filtration system there is some kind of shading system, but it doesn’t work with flares. It offers a little protection from rain and snow, but only a limited amount.
Do you use polarizing filters for your photography? Some hoods have an opening that allows you to rotate the filter once the hood is installed. This way, you can change the polarization effect without removing the lens hood. Again, the opening can only be found for deep-mount hoods, not for every hood.
While the lens hood provides protection from rain and snow, it can be a nuisance if there is a lot of wind. Deep lens hoods like those for larger telephoto zoom lenses can catch a lot of wind. If that happens, it’s nearly impossible to get a steady shot. Removing the lens hood may be the only way to get sharp images in those cases.
Make sure you use the correct sunshade
There are basically two types of sunshades: round and petal. It is important to position the back in the correct way to avoid image blur. Petal form was chosen to maximize protection from incoming light. The long side of the frame has deeper petals than the edges. If you incorrectly adjust the petal-shaped lens hood, it will show up in the image.
If you receive the lens hood with the lens you purchased, you’ll know you have the right lens hood for that lens. Focal length optimized form for maximum protection. But if you need to buy one yourself, make sure you have the right lens hood. The wrong hood may not provide enough protection from unwanted light or it will show up as a texture in your photo. You should be very careful with cheap third-party sunshades. Make sure they are optimized for your lenses.
Are lenses necessary?
Should you always use a hood or is it not so important? I used to use the lens hood all the time, anywhere. I only remove it when I want to use a filtering system. But these days, I almost never use the lens hood anymore. Not for all lenses, that is.
For me, the petal-shaped lens hood is annoying for me. These petals make it difficult to place lenses inside a shoulder bag. The petals are always hooked to the dividers. That’s why I stopped using it.
I also removed the lens hood from my wide-angle lenses. It has never been effective at blocking light from outside the frame. On top of that, I almost always use a filter system with these lenses. The only time I fitted the lens hood was for telephoto zoom lenses when there was a chance of rain or snow.
If flares occur, I always have one hand on hand to shield the light source. Then again, sometimes, a fire can be a great addition to the photo. Do you use a lens hood to take pictures? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
