Why do we need a hood? It protects your photographic masterpieces and your lens
Why do we need a hood? It protects your photographic masterpieces and your lens
Anonim

Masters of photography share: many funny moments are delivered to them by the spectacle when another amateur, trying to achieve photography skills, with a serious mine on his face in cloudy weather, puts a hood on the lens of his camera. If at the same time the device itself is equipped with a flash, the scene generally looks like a joke. The "candidate for master" clearly does not understand why a lens hood is needed.

DIY hood
DIY hood

And it's very easy to figure it out for yourself. It is enough to turn your face to something bright: the sun in the sky, glare on the water, solar reflections on mirror or metal surfaces. The hand itself instinctively reaches to cover the eyes with a "visor" above the eyebrows, doesn't it?

To realize the second benefit of a lens hood, it is enough to look at specialized photo forums a little, where there are images of lenses broken into trash with mournful comments. I think after that there will be no questions why a lens hood is needed.

When shooting conditions are difficultlighting, and you can’t change them in any way, they use a hood that prevents side rays that are not involved in the shooting process from forming glare and stray light on the frame.

The shape of the hood can be conditionally divided into simple and complex. The simple ones include conical, cylindrical and pyramidal. The complex shape of the lens hood is petal-shaped, that is, with special cutouts oriented at the corners of the frame.

Why do you need a hood
Why do you need a hood

This shape is great for short-throw lenses, but the length of the petals must be close to the focal length so as not to get into the frame. Normal focus lenses fit all forms of lens hoods; their approximate length (30-40 mm) is affected by the bore diameter of the lens. The longest hoods are telephoto (from 100 mm).

When you hear about how photographers suffer with constant lens contamination in rain and snow, with damage from a sandstorm, flying gravel or an accidental hit by a branch, you understand why a lens hood is needed in addition to fighting light "parasites". So amateurs wearing a lens hood in any weather are not so wrong.

Of the materials used to make a hood, plastic is the most common. Less common are blends made of metal and rubber. All of them perform their functions properly and are always ready to take the hit, saving a much more expensive lens.

What is a lens hood for?
What is a lens hood for?

But it turns out you can get a lens hood for just about any lens for the price of… a sheet of cardboard! Thank you for thisenthusiasts who post entire sets of patterns on their websites, thanks to which a hood is made by hand on any of the most popular photographic lenses. It is enough to download the file, print the pattern on a sheet of cardboard, cut, bend, glue and paint.

However, professionals like to show off. Why do you need a hood, they say, if your own palm is always at hand? In addition, in most cases, an unwanted source of stray light can always be hidden - for example, make sure that there is a tree crown between the lens and the sun. And besides, the masters of photography are well aware of what a strong technique in the frame can be glare or the silhouette of a person, black due to shooting against the sun.

So don't ask why you need a lens hood. Better ask yourself what you can do with it.

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