Lens hoods don’t differ all that much. Simply put, they come in two shapes: a petal shape and a cylindrical shape.
Cylindrical Lens Hoods
In general, cylindrical lens hoods are effective in shielding your lens from stray light. They frequently go along with a prime or telephoto lens. Even though they are typically long, there is very little chance that the hood will appear in your frame because the field of view shrinks when you use longer focal lengths. Also available are cylindrical rubber lens hoods that, when not in use, flatten toward the base.
Petal Lens Hoods
To maximize the frame size provided by a wide angle lens and full-frame camera sensors, petal (or tulip) lens hoods are specially made to be shorter and have curved notches that strategically block off light. It normally has four petals, and you must turn them properly to prevent them from falling into your frame.
Fortunately, there’s no need to stress over the kind or design of lens hood to purchase. Each lens hood is often designed to work with a specific range of focal lengths, so you can easily ask or study the best lens hood form for your lens.
Do you prefer a tulip lens hood?
In actuality, a rectangular or tulip “petal” hood is preferable. Both are effective at removing “flare” or unwanted light that can come from the edges of your lens. The diagrams in the link provide a much better explanation.
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When ought a lens hood to be used?
The main purpose of a lens hood is to exclude stray light from entering your lens, which can result in lens flare and reduce contrast in your photographs. When shooting into the sun or with a bright light source in front of the lens, this typically occurs. Let’s examine a few illustrations.
What does a lens hood do?
It only prevents light from passing over the lens’s front element. Here is a straightforward picture of the same thing in the same location. One with and one without a lens hood mounted to the camera. Without the lens hood, light enters the image through the front of the lens, reducing contrast and resulting in what is known as lens flare.
The front element of the lens is being obscured by the lens hood, which prevents light from reaching it.
So that’s the primary justification for using a lens hood.
to block undesired light from reaching the lens. This will prevent lens flare and give your photos a stronger color and tone contrast.
When should you use a camera lens hood?
Always wear a lens hood when shooting. Even when you’re indoors or it’s dark outside, stray light may enter your lens from the front, lowering the contrast in your picture. Utilizing a lens hood has the added benefit of protecting the lens’ front element. Your lens hood will break first if you swing your camera around and the front of it collides with something. Much less expensive to change than a lens!
Another piece of advice is to keep your lens clean at all times because doing so will improve contrast and prevent lens flare.
Exceptions to this rule
You might choose not to utilize a lens hood on occasion. When using your camera’s pop-up flash or when you truly want to create lens flare, this is the time. On some cameras, the lens hood will obscure the pop-up flash’s light, resulting in a shadow at the bottom of your image. Using a flashgun will prevent this from happening because the flash will miss the lens hood because it is higher on the camera.
Intentionally generating lens flare can also offer portrait and landscape photographs a stunning appearance.
What types of camera lens hoods you can get?
Really, there are just two major categories. a cylindrical lens hood as well as one with petals.
The edges of petal lens hoods have been removed. These hoods are utilized with normal zoom lenses and lenses that have broader angles of view. This is due to the fact that, at wide angles, you would actually be able to see the lens hood if the corners weren’t chopped away. Your photo would have black corners, which doesn’t look nice.
To test this, do the following: zoom your lens out to its widest extent, look through the viewfinder, and move your hand in front of the lens; you’ll notice the hand in the corners.
Then there are cylinder lens hoods, which are flawless cylinders with no cuts made to them. They are designed for telephoto and fixed focal length lenses (prime lenses). They have this shape because prime lenses don’t zoom out; instead, they are set to a specific focal length, allowing the hoods to be created precisely where they won’t be visible in the image. Cylindrical lens hoods are another option for telephoto lenses, which are frequently employed for sports and wildlife photography. This is because the lens hood won’t be visible because these lenses don’t have broad angles.
WHY USE A LENS HOODY?
Illustration of a lens with flare. A lens hood is made to avoid obstructing the lens’s field of view. To avoid glare and lens flare, lens hoods shield the Sun or other light source(s).
A lens hood or lens shade is a piece of equipment used on the front of a lens in photography to obscure the Sun or other light source(s) in order to reduce glare and lens flare.
[1] Without needing to use a lens cover, lens hoods can also be utilized to shield the lens from scuffs and the weather.
The focal length of the lens, the size of the front lens element, and the dimensions of the image sensor or film in the camera all play a role in how a lens hood is shaped.
When it’s overcast outside, should I wear a lens hood?
Using the depth-of-field preview button would have revealed lens flare. Then, all that is left to do is easily cover the light with a hand or hat.
It’s similar to flossing your teeth to use a lens hood. You know you should, but how many of us actually follow through? (My wife works as a dental hygienist; I have to floss.) Additionally, using a lens hood frequently will enhance the quality of your photographs, just as regular flossing will enhance the condition of your teeth.
The primary function of the lens hood is to shield the lens from direct sunlight on bright days, decreasing or completely eliminating lens flare.
Lens flare is a reflection that occurs when direct light strikes the front element of your lens or any filters you may have added. Flare can appear as a line of roughly circular forms marching across the screen, a big, hazy circle, or as a general loss of contrast. Although lens flare can be creatively exploited, we usually wish to get rid of it. A lens hood is the most effective tool for achieving that.
You need to locate your lens hood first. You probably have it in your bag somewhere. It could perhaps be in one of the side pockets. Please don’t tell me that you put it in a closet at home!
You must keep in mind to utilize your lens hood now that you know where it is (or at least are aware it is in your camera bag). A good rule of thumb is to always secure the lens hood when taking pictures.
Many photographers believe that a lens hood is unnecessary when the sun is behind them or when the sky is cloudy. That may be true in some cases, but you’d be shocked at how often you actually need to shade your lens.
Days with bright clouds are a good illustration. You need to be concerned about a sizable bright dispersed source of light rather than a bright source point of light. Lens flare will also be produced by this type of light, but it will be a sneaky lens flare that is difficult to detect. It’s the lens flare that lessens contrast.
On a day like this, I would be photographing a stream happy when I received the photographs from the lab (during the film days), and I would discover a misty haze at the top of the frame that I hadn’t observed while in the field. Even if I couldn’t recall it, there is fog in the woods. Finding out what was going on didn’t take me very long. Although I was wearing a lens hood, the bright light from the cloudy sky still struck the front of my lens, resulting in the lack of contrast I noticed in my pictures. Wide angle lenses make this situation worse. Now, in circumstances like this, I’ll shade the lens even more with my hand or a hat.
Moran State Park’s Cascade Falls. Lack of contrast shows that lens flare is present (a sort of haze in the image). By sliding your palm over the top of the lens while looking through the viewfinder, you can add more lens shading and spot this. If the contrast seems to be becoming better, you know your lens needs to be shaded properly to prevent flare issues.
Without lens flare, Cascade Falls in Moran State Park. It was necessary to add more shade in order to prevent lens flare from reducing contrast.
You can look at the scene while shading your eyes to determine if you’ll need more shading. If something seems better while your eyes are shaded, it will also appear better when your lenses are shaded. This is also possible while using the viewfinder. If you use the depth of field preview button, you might be able to see lens flare more easily sometimes.
Certain circumstances, such as when using a rectangular graduated neutral density filter or if you employ step-up rings for filters, will make utilizing a lens hood impractical or impossible. It can be difficult to get enough shading when you’re using both hands to hold a reflector, a graduated neutral-density filter, or trigger the shutter. Use a tool like The Flare Buster, or if you’re shooting with a friend, ask them to pose so their shadow falls on the front of the lens (without them being seen, of course).
Utilizing a lens hood has advantages beyond just enhancing image quality. It can safeguard your lens, for starters. I’ve banged the lens hood against a boulder, my tripod leg, and countless other hard objects. I don’t use lens protection filters because they can exacerbate issues with lens flare, but I do use a lens hood when I’m shooting. I replace the lens cap while I’m not actively shooting.
Your lens’s lens hood also serves as an umbrella. It can prevent some rain or dust from falling on the front element. This is especially true for longer lenses with deeper lens hoods, such an 80-200 zoom.
Start looking for scenarios where lens flare can be harmful. Keep in mind that lens flare might appear even without a direct light source. On cloudy days, pay extra attention because that’s when you least anticipate it. Be aware that your lens hood may not always be sufficient and that you may need to employ additional shade.
Oh, and stop behaving like your lens hood is the annoying younger sibling you simply want to throw out. Consider it a crucial component of the overall photographic quality and a component of your lens.
Comments on the NPN’s nature photography guides? For the editor, please.
Professional photographer, author, and teacher Rod Barbee works in these fields. In addition to Nature’s Best, Mead calendars, Northwest Travel and Oregon Coast magazines, the Orvis apparel catalog, the National Park Service, and other publications, he regularly contributes to Outdoor Photographer. A number of his photographs are included in the Amphoto book “American Vision.” The Photographer’s Guide to the Oregon Coast, his debut book co-written with David Middleton, is readily available all throughout the country.
He became interested in wildlife photography after exploring Olympic National Park on hiking expeditions. Since then, he has developed a passion for it from which he continues to study and develop.
Rod and Tracy Rowley reside in Port Ludlow on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington.
Does the shape of the lens hood matter?
A lens hood is a piece of plastic or metal that is attached to the front of your camera lens to give it a more polished appearance. It is one of the most popular photographic accessories. But lens hoods serve purposes beyond aesthetics. They can significantly improve the image quality of a picture, to mention one advantage. Everything you need to know about utilizing lens hoods to take the greatest images is covered in this article.
Why You Should Use a Lens Hood
A lens hood, often referred to as a lens shade, fastens to the front of your lens and prevents flare from appearing in your pictures. Additionally, it aids in shielding the lens from harm if you run into something.
That’s quite remarkable. You may instantly enhance the quality of your images and lens longevity by simply mounting a small attachment to your camera lens. For this reason, most photographers always use lens hoods.
I’ll go over some more detailed information regarding the advantages of lens hoods down below, along with some examples of images shot both with and without one. The most crucial thing to remember is to always use a lens hood to increase durability and flare resistance.
It Minimizes Flare
A hood’s primary function is to lessen the amount of lens flare that manifests itself in an image. There’s a good likelihood that you’ve experienced lens flare before if you’ve ever taken photos with bright lights in them, especially the sun. Or perhaps you’ve seen a J.J. Abrams film! Lens flare is typically something you want to avoid in ordinary photography, even though it can look good from the spaceship Enterprise.
Flare has the unfortunate tendency to occasionally appear even when the light source is outside of your shot, which is a major problem. You might not even notice this issue in the field, only to open the photo on your computer and discover that it contains strong reflections and glare. This is especially true if your lens has less sophisticated anti-glare coatings or if you’re using a low-quality filter. Different lenses have different flare propensities.
The good news is that lens hoods can help—though admittedly only when the light source is outside of your field of vision. Here are two examples of images taken, one on the left without a lens hood and one on the right (on the right). There ought to be a discernible difference. The dark region at the bottom of the first image has a reddish flare, but it’s gone in the second. Additionally corrected is the orange, hazy area in the upper right:
Therefore, it is a good idea to wear a lens hood wherever feasible to lessen flare in your photographs.
Lens Hoods Add Contrast
Not just for preventing huge areas of lens flare and discolouration. They also enhance a photo’s overall color and contrast.
Personally, I do this because of lens hoods (more on the “almost below). They never degrade your image quality when used properly. Even when you are not under direct sunlight, this is still true. Any stray light sources that hit your front element could result in a loss of contrast in an image.
The second shot in the above comparison doesn’t just have less flare; it also differs in other ways. See how much more contrast there is in the image with the lens hood on the grass in the bottom right corner of the frame? Remember that the exposure settings in the two pictures are the same. Because the shadows in the second image aren’t washed out, they appear darker.
These distinctions can appear even more pronounced depending on your lens. For the aforementioned comparison, I utilized the rather flare-resistant Nikon 35mm f/1.8 FX. Bring a lens hood along, especially if you have older glass or less expensive coatings. In the past, I’ve taken a lot of washed-out photos due to not using one. Avoid making the same error!
They Protect Your Lens from Damage
A lens hood’s primary function is to assist shield your lens from damage caused by bumps, scratches, fingerprints, and other factors aside from improving image quality. A lens hood won’t always save the day if you drop your lens, but using one is still much preferable to none at all. A cracked lens hood is preferable to a cracked front element, in my opinion.
For my own protection, I no longer use UV filters (clear filters) on my lenses; I now only use the lens hood. I’m not advocating that you do this as well—some people, particularly those who use higher-quality UV filters—but it is a possibility.
Beyond major damage, this also applies. When taking images in the rain or snow, lens hoods can help keep debris off the front of your camera lens. I constantly double-check and never leave home without a lens hood if I’m going to be outdoors in inclement weather.
When Not to Use Lens Hoods
Despite this, there are a few particular situations where using a lens hood for photography may not be possible or desirable. There are three main circumstances:
- Actually, you want a flare effect in the picture—that much is obvious.
- You are using a lens that is designed for a smaller sensor, and your photographs include some of the lens hood.
- You can’t attach a lens hood because of specific filters or accessories you have on your lens.
- Your pictures are fuzzy as a result of the lens hood catching in the wind.
To begin with, it won’t frequently be the case, but there may be occasions when you want to take a picture of flare. The photo below, which was captured using an infrared camera, has a ton of flare, but it gives the picture some personality. In situations like this, you should probably remove the lens hood:
Other times, you might have to take off the lens hood to prevent getting it in your picture. When utilizing a lens designed for smaller-sensor cameras, such a Nikon DX lens on an FX camera, this is most frequently the case. Some lenses, such as the Nikon 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5 fisheye, will, however, only partially obscure the lens hood at the widest apertures, so you’ll need to take it off to see the entire scene.
A more frequent scenario is when you have a lens attachment on, like a filter kit or ring light, which can prohibit you from initially installing a hood. Use the item if it’s essential to getting the shot you want; provided you’re careful, there’s a decent chance flare won’t destroy your pictures. Personally, I can’t use a lens hood because of the graded neutral density filter package I occasionally use for landscape photography. (There are other dedicated hoods for filter kits like this one, but they are typically way too expensive; the Lee Filters hood costs $200.)
In addition to those three primary motives, some photographers take off their lens hood to create more specialized images. You should take the hood off because it can show up in your images if you use the on-camera flash. For street photography, you might prefer to forgo the lens hood to appear less frightening. For lengthy camping journeys, I’ve even seen individuals forego their lens hoods in favor of using their hand to shade the sun in order to reduce weight and bulk.
Last but not least, removing the lens hood can help reduce vibrations in photos when taking them in windy situations. In particular, if you’re using a telephoto lens, this is valid. Personally, I sometimes forget to use a lens hood when taking landscape photos in blustery conditions without bright sunlight. The same is true when shooting photos through an open window in an aircraft or helicopter, in which case a lens hood is not necessary.
Depending on the style of photography you perform, there can be more exceptional circumstances as well, which is to be expected. By default, use a lens hood, but you are the best person to determine when it will actually hinder your photos.