From a standpoint of reducing flare & other "stuff", is there a considerable difference between a hood specifically designed for a lens, or do generics do just as well?
Would love to hear from a knowledgeable source on this...
FWIW - I have replaced any missing\damaged hoods with the "cheapies" from Hong Kong on EB. For a few $$, they ship to your door & no tax. They work just as well for me preventing flare & damage to the front of the lens.
A third party hood will reduce flare as well as a Nikon hood will.
The disadvantage, in my opinion, is that many third party hoods use the filter threads instead of the bayonet mount to attach the hood. This means that it can interfere with the lens cap (depending on the type of hood, it my require a new, smaller lens cap), and it definitely will interfere with filters, where you will have to remove the hood to install the filter, and depending on the lens you can cause vingetting by doing this.
So... functionally, they accomplish their task, it just depends on the lens what the quirks will be. The one you linked looks like it's going to require a smaller lens cap than the 77mm one that comes with the lens, so that's added expense, and I'd be surprised if you could use a filter and the hood without vingetting. Interesting that they don't state the size of the needed lens cap.
I've gone back to the Nikon bayonet style replacements after dealing with a couple third party ones that attached to the filter threads. I'd probably give a third party bayonet mount hood a try if I knew where to get one.
There are some generic hoods that are basically complete copies of the Nikon and Canon hoods and work just as well. Adorama used to sell a lot of them and they work just fine. The one linked to, though, isn't and is kind of a pain as mentioned above.
So apparently it's like many other things, where there actually is a difference between the "over-priced" Nikon and the "affordable" generic stuff which, with a few exceptions (Sigma lenses), simply doesn't do the job as well (Zeikos grips, etc.)
Don't be too surprised to see that some of the factories that make the "genuine" Nikon and Canon stuff also produce the knockoffs. The difference often being white paint. Even the knockoff lastolite boxes are virtually the same.
equestrianguy wrote:
Don't be too surprised to see that some of the factories that make the "genuine" Nikon and Canon stuff also produce the knockoffs.
Can you give a SPECIFIC example for the HB-51? I.e., one that won't make things difficult w/ the cap and filter, as others have mentioned?
Put it this way. When I was in China last year I saw first hand IMacs that looked like legit apple products except that they were missing the big apple. I'm pretty certain if they could make knock off cameras and lenses they certainly would however there are limiting factors in producing certain items.
