Lens Hoods

[Christopher Barrett]

I'm really kind of baffled (pun?) by the hoods manufactured for still cameras. I have the Arca Compendium and the Lee WA Hood. I also use an Arriflex Mattebox on my cine cameras.

First, my gripes with the Lee design: The Self-Supporting flexible bellows always lose their stiffness and then just become flacid and floppy. I've gone through maybe 4 or 5 over the years. Oh well... Also, if you want to use filters, then they have this open filter slot design... so any stray lot bouncing down into there can illuminate the front of your lens and cause it to reflect onto the filter (and then be superimposed on the image).

Compendium Hoods: don't generally have filter accommodation and if they do it's out in front where the filter could be in direct sunlight. Doesn't seem like a good idea.

My Arri Mattebox has filter trays that encloses the filter in black metal and no light gets down in there. I guess what I'd really love is a small cine-style mattebox for my still cameras. Hmm.

How do you handle situations where you need filtration but want to shade the lens (which I always do)???

[Daniel Stone]

I just sold my LEE hood and have transitioned to using a Linhof compendium hood with screw-in glass filters(so no more ND grads)
82mm filters for everything now(across all my "systems"(35mm,SL66,GX680,LF), with step-up rings for the smaller lenses/formats

works for me, but I don't do motion work, just stills

See if you can use your Arca compendium on your new 4x10, then you'll be set :)

[gregmo]

The majority of my images are shot before sunrise or after sunset. So, I typically dont shade the lens during shooting, but at times I have needed to, I've used the dark slide from the film holder to shade the lens from the sun.

[vinny]

I use the lee hood with filter slots. Never had one go bad. I had the stray light with a piece of black fabric. Never had a problem with stray light. Never.
Yes, a mini arri mb would be nice.

[Christopher Barrett]

I've got a new Lee Hood on the way to replace my saggy one. I reckon I'll just get some black fabric and elastic and piece together a "nun's knickers" to wrap the filter slots. Thanks for the input. The Chamonix is somewhere between China and Chicago and the new glass is all en route from various vendors. Christmas in the Fall!

[neil poulsen]

One option is to find a Xenophon (sic?) behind the lens filter holder for 4", gel filters.

As for a compendium bellows, I have an old-style Arca lenshood. Best that I've seen. It has four adjustable blades to shade right down to the edge of the format.

[Christopher Barrett]

This is how we used to do rear filter at HB, worked great.

http://christopherbarrett.net/forum_images/rearfilter_02.jpg
http://christopherbarrett.net/forum_images/rearfilter_01.jpg

[Drew Wiley]

I suspect there is (or was) more than one kind of Lee hood. Mine have held up quite well. But on the Sinar, I simply use the clip and rod adapter which allows you to
use a spare bellows as a compendium.

[jcoldslabs]

The compendium shade for the Calumet C-1 has a slide-in filter slot or "drawer" at the rear nearest the lens. Like most things Calumet it is beastly and heavy but works very well.

Jonathan

[David A. Goldfarb]

The Linhof compendium has the filter slot in back with an option for masking blades in front.

Sinar has frames that hold a regular 4x5" bellows and a swing-away filter holder that can go between the lens and the bellows shade.

With the Linhof compendium, you could screw glass filters onto the lens or use Linhof drop-in filters with the appropriate holder and position the rear standard of the shade far enough back so the front cell of the lens and filter are recessed into the shade.

For ultrawide lenses where there's no way to put a filter in front of the lens without vignetting, I've used the same rear-filter method as above in post #7, epoxied to the lensboard.

[aporodagon]

Chistopher, since you already have the Arca compendium, look for the accessory filter holder. It slides into the back of the compendium (there is a slot around 2 edges of the rear compendium if you check). The holder takes 4" gel filters and the inner ring rotates 360 degrees for polarizers.122521

[Darin Boville]

Hasselblad used to make a nice foldable shade which had a slot for filters. They sold metal frames for the gels with a tab for use in the shades. I used to use them all the time. Thought they were very nice.

Maybe you can adapt one of those?

--Darin

[Adamphotoman]

Horseman has a behind the lens filter holder.
Keeps all light and dust off the filter.
If someone is interested I can make some pictures.

[N Dhananjay]

I share the frustration with the lens shade issues. Many cameras are designed without thought to this and therefore no integral shade is available. You could get a lens supported system like the Lee or one of the hoods aimed at MF cameras or engineer some kind of a kludge such as buying a compendium for another brand or a lens hood and back engineering a way to get it mounted onto the front standard which usually involves tapping a hole or drilling a couple of holes into the front standard. Or you can get those barn doors and mount them onto the lens. I like camera mounted systems as they are somewhat faster than lens mounted systems and you can often leave the compendium mounted on the front standard as you swap lenses etc. Also the fact that you leave them on the standard reduces the chances of your forgetting to use a shade.

Most of the available shades/compendiums lean towards square. On formats that themselves lean towards square, this works. But on formats that deviate significantly from square (such as 8x20), you have a huge image circle with very little shading required horizontally but a lot of shading required vertically to prevent the non-image part of the image circle contributing to flare. With lens shades that are square, you just cannot shade effectively because if you adjust the shade for the horizontal axis, you will b doing a very ineffective job of shading along the vertical axis. You will have to use a mask cut to the required format or some other way to get these to work. The barn doors are probably easier to work with here but they are typically lens mounted and usually the individual leaves are not large enough to completely shade the long axis - better than nothing but still not perfect. The best way is probably the Sinar system that uses adjustable masking leaves on the compendium but these are hideously expensive.

I think a permanently attached compendium should just be standard and designed into the camera system. It is straightforward enough to design one that is attached to the camera but flips out of the way to access the lens controls, change lenses etc. That way, it is the correct shape for the format and it is permanently attached to the camera and always used as it is just one more control that is on the camera.

Cheers, DJ

[Adamphotoman]

The Sinar Adjustable Mask 11 is very effective and not as pricy as they once were. But they require an extra lightweight accessory standard, bellows rods clips. When one adds all those parts together it gets rather heavy so this bit of kit stays in the studio. To change lenses one must loosen off the rod clamp and slide the whole hood forward.
The Sinar Barn Door Mask 1 is much lighter albeit a touch flimsy. It uses 2 sliding black horizontal masks which one can adjust when setting up the format. This part can be used with bellows and accessory standard or with clips on a rod for an even lighter [flimsy] solution. I modified some of the newer and older clips to fit together to provide a much more robust solution.

[Renato Tonelli]

I have resorted to using the Linhof Technika Compendium with a modification: on the back of it, I have attached a 4x4 double tray salvaged from a Chrosziel Matte box; one of the filter stages rotates. It's not cheap and it is not perfect.