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Thread: When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

  1. #1

    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    I routinely shade my lens from the sun with my hat. Fancy guys use compendium shades, which provide shade on all four sides, instead of just on the sun side. Under what conditions would the shade work better? All I can imagine is when there is more than one source of cast light, like the sun and also an obviously bright reflection off glass or water. Any other situations? Explain to me why such a shade isn't overkill. Then I'll add it to my shopping list... ;-)

    CXC

  2. #2

    Join Date
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    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    When you need both hands.

  3. #3

    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    one of the reasons to use a compendium is certainly, as you suggest, to reduce reflection from bright lights and reflections outside the camera, but another reason is to reduce bellows flare. Sometimes light, cast by the excessive coverage of the lens, can reflect off the inside of the bellows, causing flare. Pulling a compendium out to its maximum can reduced the amount of light which is bouncing around inside the box...

    they also look cool

  4. #4
    Yes, but why? David R Munson's Avatar
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    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    In the studio. If you've got a shot set up with a half-dozen strobe heads, you'd need a pretty fancy hat to shade the lens properly.

  5. #5

    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    Greetings,

    Two instance come to mind immediately: 1)snow and 2)extreme wide angle lenses. With snow you can get even more flare from reflections below the lens as you can from above. Using really wide lenses it's often difficult to hold a card, hat, dark slide precisely in position without vignetting.

    Most modern lenses allow us to be a bit careless and still get decent results, but a good shade, compendium, whatever will improve the contrast on uncoated/older lenses considerably.

    Regards, Pete

  6. #6
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    I would agree with Jason. Many lenses used in 4x5 cover 8x10. All this extra light has to go somewhere.

  7. #7
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    I forgot, another situation where I find a compendium shade very useful is when shooting under the rain. You can position them so that not a single drop of rain touches your lens.

  8. #8

    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    Think the inconvenience often gets overrated. My Linhof compendium takes almost no space in the bag. And it offers the good feeling of having done everything possible against scattered light...

  9. #9

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    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    I could show you a recent photo where I shaded a 75mm lens with the darkslide- you can see both the edge of the darkslide and the knuckles of my right hand. Yes, a compendium would have helped.

  10. #10

    When is a compendium shade better than my hat?

    Thanks everybody for the info. It hadn't occurred to me that light would reflect off the inside of the (black) bellows.

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