Putting on a lens hood?

[jgb@etree]

I realize it's not exactly rocket science, but I'd prefer not to fuck up my wife's lens and incur her wrath.

I screwed on a UV filter, and then was able to screw on the base for the hood, but can't get shit lined up right.

WTF am I doing wrong?

[advres]

The hood has an attachment you need to put on the lens before you actually put the hood on or am I misunderstanding you? All of mine attach to the outside of lens housing. It should be only a 90º turn. Twist it until it pops on (it should have grooves to slide into) and then do 90º. If it is a pedal shape the longer side should go sideways and end up in the top/bottom when it is secure. Not sure about the hoods but if it is a Nikon, remember those go counterclockwise to tighten onto the body so maybe the hood is the same?

pics?

[bfree]

Huh? What lens? The filter should screw onto the small threads at the very end of the lens. The hood goes further in towards the body, usually just requiring a 90 degree turn.

[jgb@etree]

The hood has an attachment you need to put on the lens before you actually put the hood on or am I misunderstanding you? All of mine attach to the outside of lens housing. It should be only a 90º turn. Twist it until it pops on (it should have grooves to slide into) and then do 90º. If it is a pedal shape the longer side should go sideways and end up in the top/bottom when it is secure. Not sure about the hoods but if it is a Nikon, remember those go counterclockwise to tighten onto the body so maybe the hood is the same?

pics?

Yeah, I think I might just be retarded.

So yeah, the UV filter threaded right on to the end of the lens, then the base of the hood screwed onto the filter. The hood has three tabs that fit into three grooves (not unlike how the lens attaches to the body) but for some reason I can't get it on right. There's an adjustable ring on the base of the hood that I think I locked up at the end of the threads holding it while trying to connect the base & hood.

And I also needed to know which way the hood lines up (longer parts on top/bottom) so thanks for that.

It's a Canon (if that matters) and it's the 18-55mm lens that came with the camera. Filter & hood are some generic brand - Promaster.

[jgb@etree]

Welp, I got the ring unlocked from the end of the threads and got it all together. Problem is, the lens cap fits on the filter, but not with the hood on. So the chances of my wife actually screwing it on & off with any sort of regularity are somewhere between slim & none.

[smmokan]

Here's how you do it:

Take the UV filter off and throw it in the trash.
Screw the hood onto the lens like normal.
You're done.

[bfree]

^lol. But true, especially with a cheap UV on the kit lens.

[jgb@etree]

Really? I did notice that there were tabs on the end of the lens that would take the hood without the base piece.

The rationale behind this shit actually isn't better pictures, it's to prevent my wife from breaking/scratching stuff as she isn't always all that careful. So the UV filter is just there to protect the lens.

Should I ditch it for realz?

[DJSapp]

You're protecting a canon 18-55 kit lens that sells used for under $100, so just do whatever your wife will do consistently and upgrade when she wrecks it. Then you can worry about that lens.

[jgb@etree]

You're protecting a canon 18-55 kit lens that sells used for under $100, so just do whatever your wife will do consistently and upgrade when she wrecks it. Then you can worry about that lens.

Awesome, thanks. Didn't realize the lens was that cheap.

I ordered her a 55-200mm lens (should be delivered today) as well and that was like $500, so I figured that the 18-55mm would be priced somewhat similarly.

Any reason I shouldn't use a UV filter to protect the new lens?

[smmokan]

I hope you didn't pay $500 for the 55-200 lens. I hope you meant the 70-200 f/4 lens if you paid that much.

[Max Archer]

Awesome, thanks. Didn't realize the lens was that cheap.

I ordered her a 55-200mm lens (should be delivered today) as well and that was like $500, so I figured that the 18-55mm would be priced somewhat similarly.

Any reason I shouldn't use a UV filter to protect the new lens?

You're putting a piece of flat, plain, cheap glass in front of your highly engineered lens. Might as well shoot through a window. Even without the loss of image quality, filters also cause problems with flares, reflections, and stuff like that. I use relatively high-end Hoya filters, which have tested as the least likely to affect quality, when I'm shooting sports. It's as much to keep me from scratching the lenses when throwing them in the bag without caps as it is protection from external damage. When shooting anything else I don't bother with them.

[amox]

Any reason I shouldn't use a UV filter to protect the new lens?

Unless you are using a really nice UV filter (like B&W ones, not $8 ones) you'll get quite degraded image quality. They can induce more lens flare and other fun stuff that's not good. People also use them in case they drop their lens, but the front element is actually pretty resilient and even with some scratches you won't see worse image quality or dust. Kurt Munger did an interesting little test. Also take a look at this from LensRentals.com. If you're nervous about dropping it, use a lens hood. Hoods are cheap and don't have no effect on image quality (unless you use the wrong one and you get vignetting). So don't worry too much about little specks of dirt on your lens.

That being said some lenses require the use of a filter to be fully weather sealed, then you'd want to use a nice filter for the reasons shown by LensRentals.

[Lonnie]

You guys are a bunch of regular Ken Rockwell's.

Apart from some occasional flare, the filter isn't going to effect the IQ of a kit lens one way or the other. There's ZERO harm in keeping it on to protect the lens coatings. It's uncommon to scratch the glass itself, but the coatings are something altogether different.

[amox]

Ouch, but yeah I didn't think about that it's on the kit lens. I did an experiment a while back and I did actually see a difference in flare. It was with a crappy filter and pretty nice glass. And I am by no means a IQ perfectionist.

I just gave jgb@etree the argument against filters. Most of the time I don't use them, but if I'm in somewhere that I'm going to have to rub stuff like snow off my lens I'll put one on so I'm not rubbing the coatings off my front element. Lonnie is right, if you're worried about it, use one, I can't tell the difference 95% of the time.

[Max Archer]

You guys are a bunch of regular Ken Rockwell's.

Apart from some occasional flare, the filter isn't going to effect the IQ of a kit lens one way or the other. There's ZERO harm in keeping it on to protect the lens coatings. It's uncommon to scratch the glass itself, but the coatings are something altogether different.

I think kit lenses get worse of a rap then they deserve. I don't know how Canon's are, but the modern Nikon ones are every bit as sharp in the real world when shot a stop below max aperture as the pro lenses are. What you lose is build quality, speed, and AF performance, but the IQ is there, and a cheap filter can certainly degrade it.

If you're gonna use one, get a decent one. A 52mm Hoya HMC is pretty cheap, and that model took like 3rd place (out of like 30 filters) in a really exhaustive test using all kinds of scientific equipment a few years back. Just don't put some POS Tiffen or Promaster or whatever on there.

I'm dubious about the coatings being all that fragile. Everything I've heard from optics people says that modern coatings are as resilient as the glass they're applied to. The coatings of 30 years ago were definitely prone to being rubbed off over time, and I think that's where people get the paranoia about them from, but I've yet to see a modern lens from a major manufacturer have any problem with it. I photo edited a student paper a few years back, and that job included being in charge of our loaner gear. Most of our "good" glass was higher-end Sigma stuff that ranged between 1995 and 2005 or so, and this stuff had been battered day in and day out for all that time, by inexperienced kids who didn't know how to treat or clean the gear, and I never saw any loss of coatings.

But yeah, I do worry about scratching when constantly cleaning or beating on the lenses. With high-speed action photography you're rarely sharp enough, even at 1/4000, for a good filter to really be the limiting factor in image quality anyway, and if it's auto racing or skiing or anything else that's got the air filled with dust and grit, I roll with a filter.