I’ve scratched a lot of filters over the years due to cleaning the while shooting in bad conditions. If I took my time cleaning I would had missed many important shots. So filters are essential to me. People saying they never have damaged a lens aren’t really shooting in extreme conditions regularly. I’m personally a rare case as most people don’t shoot in as extreme conditions as I do, but in general with today’s filter technology there is very little reason to worry about a drop in IQ with UV or protect filters. That is something of a figment of the past.
I'm actually more apt to use the hoods that come with the CV 35 & 50 as you note you can actually screw them into the filter. I can leave them mounted and they both fit in my backpack vertically in a slot.
But for my waterfall shooting they have to go in order to use the filters I use.
It's not like I never use hoods. I tend to use them more on large telephotos, zooms more than primes (although I don't use zooms as much). I don't fret about using them not using them.
zugzwang2 wrote:
OK, but if you’re going to use a hood, you have to decide which hood to use.
I was interested to see that OP was considering using the hood from another zoom in an effort to save space and weight in his kit, despite the noted expected vignetting. Others may make similar sacrifices, knowingly or unknowingly.
Like Guy, I often use cheap screw-in hoods or sometimes just a couple of rings to fend off glancing side light, although I’ve never really compared the efficacy of such trade-offs. After reading this thread as well as the “hoods while traveling?” thread I attempted to do just that using my CV 35 APO as a test bed. You can get an idea of the results from a few sample shots that I’ve uploaded here:
In these tests, the OEM hood for the 35 APO doesn’t do much; it seems designed to avoid vignetting even if it’s attached to a couple of filters. The hood for the 50mm APO lens does much better, and without vignetting. Two empty filter rings didn’t provide any protection in the conditions I used, but a step-down ring combination did as well or better than the OEM hood. So—in these particular shots, with a bright light source just outside of the upper corner of the frame—the protection from flare was from best to worst CV 50 hood > step-down ring combination, which was as good or (usually better than the CV 35 hood, which was as good or better than two rings > no hood or filter rings. This seemed to track with the extent that the lens was occluded when viewed obliquely.
Since I’ve been content with the CV 35 hood until today I suppose that I could use the step-down combination when I really need to save space or use a generic “normal” lens hood that matches the lenses thread and is almost as long as the CV hood. I have no idea how this affects contrast from the great soft box in the sky, but I suppose other factors like reflections within the hood might matter, too. ...Show more →
