I GOT IT! I GOT IT!

[brileyphotog]

As mentioned before...you only really need a hood if you are having lens flare issues.

 

[chrisgrieve]

congrats on the purchase, but one question... what is the purpose of a lense hood???

 

[Keagle]

congrats on the purchase, but one question... what is the purpose of a lense hood???

Most of us use them for protection - ie. if you drop the lens then it hits the hood and not the optics. However, they are intended for preventing flare, so preventing unwanted light from entering the lens.

So they have dual purposes

 

[KhronoS]

Congrats for the purchase... its an amazing lens for the price

congrats on the purchase, but one question... what is the purpose of a lense hood???

It doesn't let the sun to light from above straight into your lens...

 

[dgreen]

Congrats, that is the one I am looking at next!

 

[DSLR noob]

Ditto, but not for the same reason.

I use that lens in lower light situations. The only real good that a lens hood does (well besides the protection thingie), is prevent lens flare from shooting into the sun. Since I never use that lens in bright light situations, a hood is useless to me.

Now, I *do* use a quality UV filter on ALL my lenses for protection.

Not necessarily true, my hood helps 20x more at night shooting than it does in the day. Daylight is fairly easy to control, it's just one REALLY bright source, and a few reflections that a polarizing filter will take care of. Night light has soooo much stray light, and of all different color temperatures(moonlight, street lights, billboards, headlights, signs, lamps, etc.), not to mention long exposure times making the lens more vulnerable to light.

 

[shorty6049]

my 50 has a built in hood, i wasnt really aware that they made hoods for 50mm lenses, (and actually sort of thought that all 50's were like that..) but i guess i was wrong. just seems wierd that such a short lens would have a tiny little hood on it haha...

mines kind of like this one, but a 1.7 instead of 1.4-
http://www.glaringnotebook.com/zimages/sao30.jpg