2008-06-09

Lens Hoods


Lens hoods minimize lens flare when shooting against the sun. Together with an UV filter the lens is also very well protected.

The 37mm lens hood shown above is offered on eBay by "hubi-77" (www.foto-tip.pl). The price is right and the quality is really good.

You need a filter on the lens (e.g an UV filter) to be able to mount these lens hoods. An UV filter is recommended anyway and it can be left on the camera all the time but if you don't want a filter on your camera there are also clear glass protection "filters" available.
If you find a lens hood with 47mm attachment diameter you could mount it directly to the camcorder without the need for a filter.

Such lens hoods are called "Tulpe" (German for tulip) because of their flower like shape. Usual round lens hoods would drop a shadow into the corners.

After seeing a HF100 with a rectangular lens hood at 00:44 in this video I'd prefer such a type. It looks way cooler. But note that such a wide lens hood covers the iAF sensor in front of the camera so there's only the slower through-the-lens contrast auto focus possible.


Don't follow me and buy a large 62 mm lens hood for the 0.5 wide angle converter as shown above. It will appear on the sides of the image at full wide angle. Don't even put a filter on because it will also be visible at full wide angle. I'm afraid no lens hood that mounts on a filter will work with the .5x wide angle converter.
The lens hood is not visible if you zoom in a little bit but since the display doesn't show the entire image you can't never be sure you zoomed in far enough (unless you use an external monitor).
The only lens hood that would work with the Raynox 5050 Pro is a large rectangular hood that mount's directly on the wide angle adapter which has about 67mm diameter at the front.

2 comments:

chaotic_structure said...

Martin, I just wanted to thank you for being so diligent in updating your experience with the HF100. I recently purchased seven of them for my video classes and have had a very difficult time finding a way to convert the mts files for use in my editing software. Pinnacle supports these files but my class will be using SpeedEdit. Now I will have to set up a PayPal account to purchase Voltaic. It appears to be the simplest conversion software available to date. Even though at my school, we use PCs, and your info is primarily for Mac users, I still enjoyed your posts. Great job! Thanks again.

Martin Koch said...

Arnaud, I don't think this hood will work because it's square. If you can find a similar rectangular hood it should work if it's large enough.