Lens hoods and vignetting

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Submitted By: AlexStewart

Joined: Dec 28 2005

Posts:

Lens hoods and vignetting

Posted: April 20, 2006 - 8:28am

Use of lens hoods is one of the many details I'm trying to learn after taking my photography more seriously after many years of dormancy. I include this context because I have a rather odd mix of knowledge and ignorance and my questions may seem very naive.
I had thought that if one uses the correct lens hood (made by the lens manufacturer for the specific lens) and one fits it on properly, one would not need to worry about mechanical vignetting. Yet either this is not true or I am not managing to fit hoods correctly. (I hope it's the latter.) I find with both my Nikkor 20-35mm f/2.8 and my Zuiko 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 and the correct hood that I cannot avoid vignetting at the widest focal lengths. Surely this cannot be the design of the hoods and I am simply not figuring out the correct fit. Thanks for any tips.

Submitted By: Anonymous

Re: Lens hoods and vignetting

Posted: April 20, 2006 - 10:00am

Alex,

No hood designed for a particular lens and from a reputable company should cause vignetting. The best insurance against vignetting is to use the hood recommended by the manufacturer. Recommendations by third party hood vendors may not always be correct. Also, do you use any filters on your lenses that may be causing vignetting? Some wide angle lenses need low-profile filters to avoid vignetting; the downside of such filters is that they don't have a front thread so you can't add another filter or screw-on type of lens hood. Also, some wide angle lenses need socalled sculpted hoods; cylindrical ones won't work on those lenses.

Frans Waterlander
pixographer and printer

Submitted By: AlexStewart

Joined: Dec 28 2005

Posts:

Re: Lens hoods and vignetting

Posted: April 20, 2006 - 5:38pm

Thanks Frans. I think I managed to embarrass myself into figuring out how to get them on properly. I thought I'd fiddled sufficiently but apparently not; today I did manage it. Thanks also for the tip about secondary hoods because of course these hoods are meant for the wide end of the range as you suggest.