Separate hood for 50 1.4 Asph?

[Philip Freedman]

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The built in hood of the Summilux 50 1.4 asph is quite short. Would it be better if I used a slightly larger screw in vented hood, or is the lens's flare resistance so good that it doesn't matter?

 

thanks Philip

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[Alnitak]

The built in hood of the Summilux 50 1.4 asph is quite short. Would it be better if I used a slightly larger screw in vented hood, or is the lens's flare resistance so good that it doesn't matter?

 

thanks Philip

 

The flare resistance is superb. I often use the lens with the hood retracted and haven't ever had any flare problems. Don't worry about it.

 

Jeff

[viramati]

Ditto

[glenerrolrd]

I have sometimes used a small round hood (simple without cutouts) that has a 46mm thread. Heavystar on eBay sells these for around $10. The purpose being to provide some protection when I am street shooting . I then use a small piece of black gaffer tape to cover the outside of the built in hood . This protects the lens from dings when shooting with multiple bodies .

 

Overkill maybe but used prices of summiluxes take a hit if you have any marks on the built in hood . This is more of a problem if you use two bodies . I have not had any flare problems ...the 50 asph is quite amazing .

[Shootist]

The flare resistance is superb. I often use the lens with the hood retracted and haven't ever had any flare problems. Don't worry about it.

 

Jeff

 

 

Well recently this has not been my experience with this lens. The whole image looks flat, no contrast at all, to the point I thought something is wrong with the lens or something had smeared on the IR/UV filter. these were shots taken with sun high in front of me and hood retracted.

[erl]

If you find an impulse to shade your eyes either with your hand or a baseball cap or....... whatever, trust me, your Leica lenses will benefit from the same shade. 50+ years of wide experience have proven to me the benefit of an effective sun shade on any lens.

 

Typically, I find most Leica lens hoods to be ineffective against moderate or worse lens flare. They are the weak link in Leica lenses. When I was an active Hasselblad user, I found significant improvement when using the 'Pro' shade over the 'standard' shade on all lenses. I did conduct careful tests to establish this knowledge, but it is readily demonstrable in actual real situations.

 

Because of the very convenient compactness of the the Leica lens hoods, I do rely on them these days, often at the cost of loss of contrast (which causes flatness and worse) of some images, exactly as Shootist reports.

[microview]

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The built in hood of the Summilux 50 1.4 asph is quite short. Would it be better if I used a slightly larger screw in vented hood, or is the lens's flare resistance so good that it doesn't matter?

 

thanks Philip

 

I haven't found the 50 1.4 ASPH to be as flare resistant as other posters have suggested here. Why not try a wholly inexpensive experiment to see how much longer the built-in hood might be? Just cut a strip of matte black paper to make a cylinder fitting around the outer of the hood; put a strip of adhesive tape over the overlap of the paper. Then slide it forward, well beyond the normal extension of the Leica hood. At some point, images will show as if looking down a black tunnel – when you see that, the tube has been pushed too far out. But you would be surprised by the amount beyond the built-in hood you can go! Then try tricking the lens into flaring (which shows as a tea-coloured patch in one corner of your image). Lars mentions flare effects at http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/123946-real-world-differences-50-lux-vs.html.

[Philippe D.]

Hi Philip.

The built in hood of the Summilux 50 1.4 asph is quite short.

Especially when you are using two filters...

Would it be better if I used a slightly larger screw in vented hood

That's what i do when an IR/UV + Pol filter are on.

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