Free Lens Hoods...

Printable PDF documents to make your own lens hoods, Calculate your own hood in the field! & Plastic Bottle hoods too!

Lets face it many of us go without lens hoods when in fact they are one of the most important ways we can go about improving our photographs. The purpose of a lens hood is to prevent flare, which can seriously degrade the image quality of photographic lenses. This being said it is often the case that we do not get a lens hood when we purchase the lens, or often in my particular case, the size of the lens hood means it often gets left at home rather than on the camera.

Cut along the dotted line...

The folks at www.lenshoods.co.uk have completly and utterly obliterated any more lame excuses why the rest of us don't use a lens hood. First off they offer them for free! You hear that Canon & Nikon, and anyone else who charges upwards of $100 for a piece of round plastic. Second they are made from paper so size is no longer an issue, they will simply fold right up. These guys provide hoods in Adobe PDF files for most major manufactures (Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax) and third party lens companies (Sigma, Tamron, Tokina) too. They also provide a service that lets you design your own. These guys even go farther than your manafactur often does, and offer conventional round hoods as well as tulip petal-shaped lens hoods with curved cutout notches. This tulip petal design maximizes the amount of hood coverage for the minimum amount of weight and hood area. Tulip-shaped hoods cannot be used on lenses with rotating ends though, because perfect hoods must be aligned to the sensor frame dimensions.

RegularJen blogged about how she was able to use the PDF lenshoods as templates to cut ones from black art foam: lens hoods on the cheap with bonus conversation.

Don't forget to Recycle...

Another great source for lens hoods is found in every day items around the house, namely plastic bottles.

About all it takes is some time and care and careful, slow going to cut the material appropriately and such that it fits properly. In this instance, the 40.5mm diameter of a typical Russky normal lens did not translate out perfectly to the diameter of the plastic bottle, and thus it was necessary to make the cut such that its slightly concave (as seen in the accompanying photo).

When fitted onto the lens, the plastic flexes slightly and exerts a bit more holding pressure than would naturally occur in a straightforward ‘press on’ fitting.

The now finished hood is painted a flat or matte black, and the job is complete. I consider this the “perfect” lens hood for one main reason: it didn’t cost anything but the few minutes work it took to make it.

To really finish it off you could use your PDF printout of a tulip petal-shaped hood to trim the front of the plastic bottle hood.

You do the math...

Finally thanks to The Great Pyramids, Igor Yefremov, and a little math, we can now easily make our own lens hoods from scratch, on the go and in the field. Read his article How to make a simple lens hood, Recalling ancient pyramids.

One of the most important ways we can go about improving our photographs...

So still not convinced a lens hood is the thing for you? Then you must read Lens Hoods, over at vanwalree.com. It is an expert text on lens flare and the effects of different style hoods to combat it. It is simple to read and has lots of good visuals, don't miss it.

If you are still in the mood for some photographic arts and crafts try these:

The Domokon Cardboard SLR
&
The Dirkon Paper Camera