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Large Format Lens Hoods?
I think you had it right the first time. I can't count the number of imaged I've seen of Adams with his Stetson, and do recall one image of him using it as a shade with hid 'blad. Weston on the other hand more often than not seems to have gone "lidless". I can only recall seeing two shots of him with a chapeaux - a Campaign hat and a beret. In his list of equipment for his Guggenheim, he always seems to mention the "Worsching Counter Light Cap" a combination lens shade/lens cap.
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Large Format Lens Hoods?
The hoods they sell for the RB-67 lenses are incredible. They are big enough to fit LF lenses, I even have to step mine down a bit. They also have a metal ring inside the rubber to stiffen them. I think they are actually the nice Hoya hoods, labled as Mamiya. The 645 system hoods are great, too, but in smaller sizes. You can find them used for less the $15 sometimes. They squish flatter to carry, too. They don't fold within the field camera, but I always take one along.
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Large Format Lens Hoods?
I tried using a hood, but gave up. The metal/rubber hoods sold for MF cameras won't work if you use much movement, since you will cut off your image circle. The bellows lens hoods sold by Lee allow one to adjust the hood in response to movements. I tried the Lee hood, but found it was too long for my usual combination: G-claron 270mm with 8x10. The hood often got into the picture even at its shortest position. The hood worked well with my Fuji 450mm, but I don't use this lens much. Now, I block the sun with my focusing cloth.
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Large Format Lens Hoods?
The movements used with large format cameras makes the use of lens shades more difficult that with 35 mm or medium format, where the lens never moves up, down, or sideways (ignoring PC lenses for the moment). That's why compendium shades are used - they can be adjusted to conform to the lens movement. As someone else has pointed out, you don't use a lens shade only to prevent direct sunlight from striking the lens. It that were the case no one would ever need a lens shade since it's fairly simply to block direct sunlight with a dark slide, hand, hat, etc. The need for a shade is actually greater in bright diffuse light than in direct sun light and a hat, hand, dark slike, etc. won't help in that kind of light. The difficulty I've found even with a compendium shade is the problem of the shade causing vignetting of the film corners. In theory you can see this by looking at the ground glass but you're supposed to look at the shooting aperture, not with the aperture wide open, and who can see the corners of the ground glass very well at F 32 or 45?
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Large Format Lens Hoods?
Take the back off and look through the aperture from the corners of the rear frame. If there is cut-off, you'll see it in the irregular shape of the aperture.
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Large Format Lens Hoods?
... or look at the groundglass through the stopped down lens (from in front of the camera). if you can see the corners of the groundglass ....