I'm planning an African Safari for next year and plan to take some Lee filter kit to use with a 50-500mm Sigma OS lens and a 24-70mm zoom lens. I'll be aiming for nice safari telezoom photographs and some wide angle long exposure shots of Victoria Falls and the garden route coastline of Sth Africa.
I'd like to avoid the need to take the lens hoods for either of those two lenses by instead taking a collapsible Lee Lens Hood.
The filters I will take with me include:
Big Stopper
0.9 ND
0.6 ND Grad
Circular Polariser
So the lens hood needs to be able to prevent ghosting at 500mm and avoid vignetting at 24mm on a full frame camera. It also needs to be able to work with the C-PL.
I will have 95mm and 77mm adaptor rings to fit the foundation kit and/or lens hood.
Lee makes lens hoods which either fit directly onto an adaptor ring, or onto the end of the foundation kit.
However, I'm unsure of whether the C-PL filter goes on front of the lens hood, or at the back of it between the adaptor ring/foundation kit and the lens hood.
Can anyone here advise me from their usage of Lee gear which Lens hood I should purchase?
clumsy to setup and take down price limited use. i use a lastolite trigrip as a shade when i have assist or even on my own. it also quite useful in other ways too. as a shade a reflector and lastly even a makeshift fan
a few sizes to choose from http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=lastolite+trigrip&N=0&InitialSearch=yes
I don't think that my spouse would be willing to hop out of the safari vehicle to hold up a shade over my lens whilst I photograph a pack of hungry lionesses who are squabbling over a carcass only 30ft away ;-)
I know that the Lee gear is not cheap, but it provides versatility across lenses and has good re-sale value (given the shortage of Lee Big Stoppers, they sell on eBay at more than double their original purchase price).
does that mean you'll be jumping out though? why should she? i don't think one needs to do that at all. after all we are talking about something that extends no more the 6 in from your lens end. and i think you'll find you'll not use them as much as you think you will. their hoods aren't in real short supply just a few particular products are.
I safari in Africa regularly (about a dozen times so far) and never used such a hood. It is not that often that I shoot backlit lions and very rarely at such an angle that flare it is a problem. I do avoid the wide-ranging zooms which have shorter hoods of necessity. If you are shooting in APS-C format it is usually possible to extend the regular hood with heavy paperboard or a plastic tube. Whatever hood doohickeys you have should to be on the lens at all times so you can pick up and shoot within a few seconds.
i am aware of the the safety limits imposed in such situations . i'm just trying to make a point. trying to wrestle around with additional moving parts hanging off the end of a lens isn't a really good option. where a simple parasol would do most of the job or something similar to it.
I suspect you missed my joke - we won't be getting out of the safari vehicles, though we will also have a walking safari between bush camps with an armed guard. I'll move on my row to be sitting on the side of the vehicle closest to the animals, so having someone in front of me is not an option. My spouse would also not be interested in holding a screen/parasol constantly to shade my lens ;-)
I suspect that I may have to take the hood for the Sigma 50-500mm with me as the filters are more likely to find more use on other parts of the trip when I'm using the wide angle lens, eg when around camp taking panoramic shots, etc.
Fortunately, I plan to do a mini safari before I go at a local open plains wildlife zoo, which will give me the chance to test out various options and to see how efficient/cumbersome they are.
I hope it works out for you. Do you have other lenses like a 70-200/2.8? If the 50-500 goes south, you should have a backup over 70mm and a faster lens can be useful sometimes.
. i'm just trying to make a point. trying to wrestle around with additional moving parts hanging off the end of a lens isn't a really good option. where a simple parasol would do most of the job or something similar to it.