Convenience… Compendium or Collapsible Lens Hood

[Scott Rosenberg]

hey guys...

what's the general consensus on lens shades... i just bought a hamma three-position rubber collapsible shade and am so impressed with it that i'm considering buying one to leave permanently on each of my lenses. this would save me the bulk and hassle of carrying around and setting up a compendium shade in the field.

have any of you guys switched to the collapsible shades? do they work well enough to reduce stray light? this hamma shade extends a full two inches past the front element of the lens, and so i think will provide adequate shading of the lens. it also flares out nicely, so i don't think that vignetting will be an issue. just trying to simplify the process as much as possible!

any inputs would be appreciated.

thanks,
scott

[Michael Kadillak]

You are on to something here Scott.

A couple of years ago I acquired a Canham compendium that is a wonderful tool, but it only comes out under extreme lighting conditions. To many knobs to tighten and pieces to put together. Like you I find that the collapsable lens hoods are compact, light and do their job extremely well for a very small price tag.

Only one problem I have recently had with them. Last weekend I forgot to put the 67mm wide angle lens hood on the 355 G Claron (used the standard hood) on an 8x20 shot and I vignetted like a big dog. Make sure that you stop down and check your ground glass and do not get lazy like I did.

Cheers!

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

I use both collapsible rubber shades and a Lee hood. In most situations the collapsible shades work just fine, however there is really no replacing a good compendium hood. Don't forget that the purpose of a compendium is not only to "shade" light from hitting the glass and causing flare, it also cuts out as much as possible of the non-image forming light, which bounces around inside your camera.

Anyway, compendium hoods look slick.

[Scott Rosenberg]

thanks fellas...

jason, i agree with you, the compendium shades do look great. i had one for my technika, but after the first few trips, i found that i didn't use it, as it was just something else to unpack, set-up, break-down, and pack-up again. i guess i'm a lazy, lazy man.

michael, to reduce my chances of vignetting, i was going to step all my lenses up to 72mm and buy shades at that size. my lenses have front elements in the following sizes: 49, 52, 60, 67, 72

if i us 72mm filters on these lenses, is that going to reduce the effectiveness of the shade?

these hamma hoods feature a front thread that is larger than the rear thread, which should further prevent vignetting if i add a filter. the 72mm hoods have a 77mm front, so i'll need to buy larger filters, but i was planning on doing that anyway.

[Michael Kadillak]

That approach should work fine Scott and it should not reduce the effectiveness of the shade at all.

I would still be carefull even with the extra step up size with any wide lens you are using as a coverage angle in the range of 80-85 degrees could surprize you at how quickly they get to the corners of a regular hood or for that matter even a wide angle hood. Better to check movements and your ground glass before you go out just to make sure.

I found that I had too large a requirement for this technique as the best that I could do was group things into 52mm, 67mm, 77mm and 95mm for my optics with screw in filters. Little more to carry, but you do what you have to do to get things done.

Cheers!

[Scott Rosenberg]

hey michael... my 2 widest lenses are 80-XL and 110-XL. both have 67mm front threads and 105 degrees of coverage. the jump from 67 - 72 will probably not be adequate to keep this shade out of the field of view for these two lenses. i might need to use a wide angle specific hood for them... thanks for the heads-up!

[Donald Hutton]

Personally, the only time I ever use one of the two Lee hoods I have, is indoors with lightsources all over the place. Outdoors, I use a darkslide or the GG protector from my Ebony - I don't have to remember to pack it... I've never encountered the sun in more than one position at a time, so only shading on the side of the lens that needs it works perfectly every time. It's far less time consuming than any other lens shade and becuase it's not attached to the camera, it does not add "windage". And, you can't beat the price... Seriously, I'm not a minimalist photographer at all, but this is one area I think is really sensible to keep simple and quick...

[Scott Rosenberg]

hey don... i read somewhere that for a lens shade to be most effective it had to shade the entire circumference of the lens, as it's just important to block indirect stray light as direct stray light. i might be remembering wrong, so i'll try to find that article to confirm my suspicions.

either method is bound to be more effective then the compendium that never leaves my pack!

[Donald Hutton]

Well, with the "darkslide" method, you just hold it so that the lens is "shadowed" - I cannot believe that any extra light entering the lens from the "unused" portion of the angle of view would have any effect unless you have a bellows flare problem.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I use the compendium when I can, and fixed or collapsible shades when it's inconvenient to use a compendium. The compendium is just more effective and versatile as a lens shade and to restrict the image circle of the lens, but it can make the camera less stable outdoors in the wind or awkward when I'm shooting press-camera style with the rangefinder.

[Paul Butzi]

"Well, with the "darkslide" method, you just hold it so that the lens is "shadowed" - I cannot believe that any extra light entering the lens from the "unused" portion of the angle of view would have any effect unless you have a bellows flare problem."

You might be surprised.

Try this: on a day with clear sky, go outside, compose a scene pointing away from the sun.

Under the dark cloth, pop the GG off the camera, and see how much light you can see coming off the bellows. I did it with a Wisner and a 300mm lens so the bellows were extended some, and it was like my own private little discotheque in there.

The bellows in my linhof TK is better, and roomier, and so there's less bellows flare. Still, with a 450mm lens, it's an issue for sure.

Bellows flare is a real problem. Really.

-Paul

[Scott Rosenberg]

so Paul, what do you recommend? are the collapsible rubber shades adequate, or must one use a compendium for an real shading?

[Will Strain]

and while we're on the subject, are there any compendiums anybody can recommend that will fit on a wisner traditional 4x5 (other than the lee ones, which just fit on the lens)?

[Donald Hutton]

Paul

I see the point - but that surely that really only applies to lenses with much greater coverage than necessary (like a 300mm Tessar or the 450 which will both cover 8X10 easily so really are pouring all sorts of extraneous light into the bellows of a 4X5). That said, I have used both quite extensively on 4X5 and have never seen a single sheet ruined by bellows flare. I only shadow the front element when I need to outdoors. I can't believe that I could have just been that "lucky" if it was a real potential problem? I also don't believe that the inside of the bellows on my Ebony are much different to anything else out there in terms of absorbing stray light. I suppose what I'm saying is that bellows flare is a different issue to lens flare - I believe that you can avoid all lens flare with the darkslide shade and I have yet to experience any problems with bellows flare.

[David A. Goldfarb]

You're also getting lots of extra image circle whenever you're shooting in the portrait range or closer. The advantage of a compendium shade is the sort of thing you are much more likely to see when you do a side-by-side test. It might look like you're not losing any contrast due to lens flare or bellows flare until you really do a critical comparison.

[Paul Butzi]

Don-

Yes, clearly bellows flare is going to be a function of how much larger than the film the circle of illumination is.

Several points:
1) For many lenses, the circle of illumination is larger than the manufacturer's quoted image circle size, and the bellows doesn't care if the image is sharp, it's just go to reflect the light all over the place.

2) Bellows flare is more of an issue on cameras with short maximum bellows draw, because as the bellows stretches out, the pleats flatten and thus are less effective 'baffles' and more 'straight tube'.

3) lenses have more coverage than you seem to think. A 150mm Apo-Sironar-N has a image circle of 214mm, so that the image circle when focused at infinity is roughly 2cm out from the *corners* of the film. That's a lot of light whanging around.

Both lens flare and bellows flare are going to be caused by ANY light that hits the lens surface that is not landing on the film (or absorbed by the bellows or the lens elements and mount, or just reflected back out of the camera).

You walk around all the time, looking through your eyes, and you never notice the lens and bellows flare of your eye. But do this - go get a toilet paper tube. Make the inside black. Go outside, and look at some shadow area, and then look at the same area through the tube. Notice the difference?

Unless you've made two exposures of the same scene, one with a properly adjusted compendium and one with no shade at all, you're probably unaware of how much flare will reduce tonal separation in the shadows. I know I was before I happened to notice the bellows flare and ran a test.

Now, all that said, I'm the first to admit that when I had a Lee compendium, I didn't use it. It was too much hassle.

Now that I have two different circular shades (one a spun aluminum one, one one of the telescoping/folding rubber ones) I use them most of the time.

But sometimes, I just use a gobo, like a handy readyload packet or a darkslide, or my hat.

[Donald Hutton]

Well now you have me thinking Paul... and that's a dangerous state of affairs! I am going to have to sacrifice a few hours this week to do some experiments.

[Mark_3632]

Great thread. Is there a catch all kind of compedium hood that might attach to the standard of different types of cameras or are they all brand specific? Or is Lee the only option. I want one for my Sinar F1, and Prinzdorff. Anyone use the Cokin lens shade?

[Scott Rosenberg]

don, please be sure to share your findings with us.