Why do I need a lens hood? It protects your photo masterpieces and your lens

Masters of photography are divided: a lot of funny minutes, they deliver a spectacle, when another amateur, trying to reach the photo studio, with a serious face on the cloudy weather, wears on the lens of his apparatus blend. If the device itself is equipped with a flash, the scene generally looks like an anecdote. "Candidate for the master" clearly does not understand why a lens hood is needed.

And to understand this is very simple. It is enough to turn to face something bright: the sun in the sky, glare on the water, solar reflections on mirror or metal surfaces. The hand itself instinctively reaches out to cover the eyes with a "visor" over the eyebrows, is not it?

To realize the second benefit from the lens hood, it's enough to look through specialized photo forums, where images of broken-up lenses with mourning comments meet.
I think, after that, there will be no more questions, why a blend is needed.

If difficult lighting conditions are added during shooting, and they can not be changed at all, apply a lens hood that prevents side beams not participating in the process of shooting to form glare and parasitic light on the frame.

The shape of the blend can be divided into simple and complex. To the simple are conical, cylindrical and pyramidal. The complex shape of the lens hood is petal, that is, with special cutouts oriented at the corners of the frame.

This shape is great for short-focus lenses, but the length of the petals should cover the focal length so as not to get into the frame. Objectives with a normal focus fit all forms of blends; The approximate length (30-40 mm) is affected by the landing diameter of the lens. The longest blends are long-focus (from 100 mm).

When you hear about how photographers suffer with constant pollution of the lens in the rain and snow, with damages from a sandstorm, flying gravel or an accidental impact by a branch, you understand why you need a blend other than fighting light "parasites". So amateurs who wear a blend on the lens in any weather, are not so wrong.

Of the materials that are used to make the blend, plastic is the most common. Less common are blends of metal and rubber. All of them regularly perform their functions and are always ready, to save a much more expensive lens, to take a hit on themselves.

But, it turns out, you can get a blend on almost any lens at the price of ... a sheet of cardboard! For this it is necessary to say thank you to the enthusiasts, laying out on their websites whole sets of patterns, thanks to which the hood is made by one's own hands on any of the most popular photographic lenses. It is enough to download a file, print a pattern on a sheet of cardboard, cut, bend, glue and paint.

However, professionals like to poke. Why do you need a blend, they say, if your own palm is always at hand? In addition, an undesirable source of parasitic light in most cases can always be hidden - for example, to make a tree between the lens and the sun . And besides, photo artists know perfectly well what a strong reception in the frame can be a glare or a silhouette of a man, black because of the shooting against the sun.

So do not ask why you need a lens hood. Better ask yourself what you can do with it.