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Nikon Lenses: The Complete Guide

Lesson 40 of 57

Lens Accessories: Lens Hood


Nikon Lenses: The Complete Guide

Lesson 40 of 57

Lens Accessories: Lens Hood


Lesson Info

Lens Accessories: Lens Hood

All right next up this is probably the area that most beginner photographers mess up the most I see this being misused more than almost anything else in photography is the lens hood and I don't know if there's proper lens hood etiquette but there is certainly good technique that I could talk about here so the lens hood is a little plastic piece for the most part that you're going attached to the outside of your lands that often comes with the lens but sometimes sold separately and it is designed to help avoid this flare problem this ghosting problem when you have a bright light source hitting the front of your lands it makes it very difficult to capture good light coming through the camera I'm sure we've all experienced being inside walking outside on a bright sunny day and holding your hand up over your eye that blocks the light from hitting your eye here so that you can see everything out there a little bit more easily because that like great in the studio here we got some bright lig...

hts up here and this this is a lot more comfortable then this so maybe I should just do the rest of the class is it okay if I do the rest of the class like this I should wear a hat would you guys mind if I wore a hat? I'm getting comes up on it. Okay, so that's what it's doing on our cameras all right, so when we point our cameras, we have an angle of view that we see all right, and sometimes we point our cameras at the sun and bright lights and things, and that light is corrected and dealt with as best it can in the optics, but every time light hits a lens surface surface, it has the possibility of refracting reflecting and bouncing somewhere else where it's not supposed to, which means we're going to lose contrast in our lands, and so they do the best they can for the lights that we point our cameras out. So the other type of light that we don't have to worry about is light behind our lands. Ok? So that's not causing a problem because it's not hitting the front of our land, it's in between this is what I like to call the flare zone. This is where you have lights that could hit the front of your lands, but they're not in the frame. So it's somebody off to the side bright light, that's going to cause a problem because it's hitting that front of the lands and, of course, mounting a lens hood is going to block off all of those other lights that could potentially be causing a problem on your lands. So another example. We have no hood on the camera I can tell because I can see a big old flare spot down at the bottom I can see a very clear one up top and if I forget about those for the moment I would look at the image and it seems tto lack good blacks it does not have a nice deep dark black tone to any of the really dark points in there and it's what we call a little bit of a muddy image it doesn't have strong contrast to it let's add a filter or not a filter but a hood to this and you can see we've gotten rid of the flare marks and we've added a bit of contrast to the image a little bit of snap to it it appears a little bit sharper let's do split screen so no hood and hood and you can see how not having a hood has almost added a hes cast over the entire tree now this is an area where you see a big impact with it there are some areas were using a hood or no hood would make virtually no difference at all and it really has to do with how bright is the light source and where is it you know if you're out shooting at night and there's no bright light source you're not going to need a hood all right this is really gonna help out mostly when you're out bright sun but it could help out inside any time you have lights hitting the front of your lands that are a little off access from what you're shooting and so there's a light probably like just like one of these other lights on the bridge, but it's just off camera and it's shining it's hitting the front of the lens and it's bouncing light around and so we could get mad and call nikon and say you built a lens that's defective that has flair but that's the case with all lenses, they're gonna have it if you get strong enough so if you simply just block that light source, you won't have that flair problem. One of the things you'll find is that we have round hoods and we have these scalloped or petal shaped hoods, and each hood is designed for a specific land, so every lands has its matching lens hood for it. And so if you do wanna buy a hood for your lens, you don't have one you gotta look up what's the exact hood for this. Now there are some generic ones I know there was these rubber, generic ones that would flip out for telephoto, normal and wide angle and they can work out, but it's always nice to have the dedicated lens hood because you're getting the maximum coverage and so the reason why that they are I don't know what's funny about this I don't know why people laugh I hate I want to do this again I don't I don't get it it's a nice standard shot and so this is the scallop shaped lens hood it's designed for wide angle lenses, and when we put it over the lens, you can see why it's shaped the way it is so that we get the maximum coverage with a wide angle lens and so each lens has its own unique type of covering. The one thing you do need to be worried about for those of you who used the built in flash system on your camera is that if you mount a hood on it, it's likely to interfere with the flash and block a certain portion of the scene off and so using a hood indoors with built in flash is not recommended and so I generally recommend using the hood all the time, but this is definitely an exception to the rule and sometimes flare is kind of a nice way I mean that's what we add flair to things you know it's a certain style, a look to something and it's kind of got a gritty look you can ask j j abrams about flare had if anyone who's seen space movies or his his his sci fi movies, his star trek series behind the scenes is very interesting because it has seen this, but in it he wanted to have a very realistic look. Or he wanted to do this flare thing. And so he's shooting with this camera right here and he's shooting this scene right here. And he's got a grip over here. Who's got this? I don't know. Just incredibly bright light, he's, like shine it straight into the lands. Yes. And it would cause all this light to streak around all over the place. And just as a side note, when the ship got hit, he wanted the camera to shake. And so he had one guy holding a camera. They got these big city cameras. And then there was another guy holding the camera back here, and they get shook it and some guys shaking the camera back here is the other guy's trying to hold on to the camera because that was the best way that they could vibrate the camera to make it look realistic. They tried, like machines and motors to vibrate it, but they just needed somebody to just shake that camera's much as possible. Might I diverged from our topic. Okay, so lens hood. I would highly recommend them now. There's a bunch of lenses that just have lens hood's built in some of them are the white angles that are just really, really small lens hood's some of them have built in linz hoods that kind of pop out. And did we have? We think we had one here. This is the three hundred millimeter f four, and I loved it when they did this. This is built in, which means I can't lose it. Okay? It's always here, and you could actually send it out, bring it out, and then just tighten it in right there. So it's right there, perfect that's. Awesome. I love those type of lens hood's. And then we have a lot of the other ones that you can see like this is a big petal shaped hood right here, so that we get maximum coverage and you'll find that the bigger the zoom lands, the smaller the lens hood, because it has to always be able to be used at the widest angle end. And so when you get into the telephoto lenses, they're goingto have some really effective lens. Hood's, like the most effective lens hood is on this five hundred f or so, this one here, this is the lens hood right here, and so it blocks out that light, and so if you have a telephoto shot, I'm gonna try this on our main camera here, so I'm gonna bring this right up to the camera and you can see through here and I don't know if we have we didn't test this in practice here, and so this has a very effective way of blocking light coming from the side of it and so with the telephoto lands, that is a really nice piece now this if you notice the pattern on it, it's a carbon fiber teo to reduce the weight of it, and so this is not a lens hood that you want to lose because that is a very valuable lens hood. Some of those big lens heads could be very, very expensive, so we have our little lens hood's, kind of a little bit of a scallop shaped and then a big scallop shape for our really big zoom lenses. Here we go. So, uh, for the new three hundred pf lens, they have their own nice round lens hood. This lens hood for the six hundred f four is a double lens hood so that it can retract and fit into a very small space. Don't lose that lens hood that lens hood where's my price is five hundred thirty dollars this is probably a four hundred dollar lens hood it doubles if you want to work at the shriners very good for that. Okay? And so they have these other different letters on here and so it depends on how they attached. A lot of them are just kind of a bayonet snap on there's different styles and that just nikon zone lettering and model system so that you know how to keep those lens hood straight and let me grab another lens let's see, where is this so if for some reason you don't like me, you just don't like me here's what you do you sign up for one of my tours and on the entire tour you shoot with your lens like this it would drive me nuts, it's like you've got the lens hood right there all you have to do is turn it around. Why don't you want to use it? Psycho take so much trouble to turn it around and I see people all the time with their lens hood's reversed and the lens hood it doesn't hurt anything I mean it's really good like if it's raining keeps the rain off the front of the lands if you bump into oh whoops, it's a little bit of a bumper because this well being this is an expensive piece of plastic I'm not sure exactly how much this is it's probably fifty bucks but that's a whole lot cheaper than breaking the front of your lads and so this is great for storing your lands but you know if you're going to spend a thousand dollars on the lands just use the lens hood properly you know if you're going to bring it out there and use it it's just one of those things you got it right there I mean I could see not bringing the lens hood because it doesn't fit or something like that but once you have it use it, you got it there all right? So that's lens hood I'll just check in real quick tennessee if there's any questions we need to address at this point well, I'm glad you went so in depth about filters john because there's always so many questions on filters on dh maybe one quick question when you you should have a pick an image of a sunset picture that have foreground had flowers and you talked about how if the subjects air moving that using that nd filter graduated andy filter is probably better than h e r is there a time where hdr is better than using a graduated andy filter or certain scenarios? Questions from the yeah hdr would be better if they're not moving subjects and if you have a tricky horizon lines so imagine ah horizon with a mountain if you put an indie filter you're going to dark on the top of the mountain when you're trying to darken the sky and so for unusually the the indie filter works best if it's mostly a flat horizon now that gradation allows it to slowly kind of breakthrough so that if it's a rolling hills or maybe the mountains or smaller or the trees or small are smaller and you get a position right, it will look pretty good, but technically you could get a better result from hdr now the image that I showed you in that example, someone could successfully argue and say, I don't like that photo because in that photo, there was a little bit of a hill that went up to the right and I darkened the grass on the hill a little bit more than the other graphs in the photo and so on. There are reasons why it could be better, but then again, you've got to go through all the steps afterwards to make it right. Okay, one more quick question this's about thie m c slash I are cut off filter are you familiar with that? And the person is saying that they're using it as a as a uv filter and is that okay? And it may be just what was it what's the letters again? M c slash I are cut off I'm wondering if it's it sounds like they're doing some infrared photography and I've only dabbled in infrared and so that's they're doing something a little outside of my experience on the normal realm. And so it's, an infrared type filter that they're working with. It sounds like

Class Description

The world of interchangeable lenses can be both exciting and confusing to all levels of photographers. Nikon® Lenses: The Complete Guide with John Greengo will help you choose the right lens and get the most out of all of your lens investments.

John Greengo is the master of making complex photography concepts easy to understand and in this class, he’ll bring all of your Nikon DSLR lens options and operations into focus. 

You’ll learn about:

  • Focal length and aperture
  • Nikon® zoom lenses
  • Which lens accessories to buy
  • Third-party lenses
  • Maintaining a lens system

John will cover the full range of Nikon lenses, from ultra-wide to super-telephoto, zooms to primes, fisheye to tilt-shift. You’ll learn how to match the lens to your needs and get insights on the best ways to use it.

Whether you are looking to buy a new lens or just want to get the most out of what you already have, John Greengo will help you to become a master of the Nikon® lens.


  1. Nikon Lens Class Introduction
  2. Nikon Lens Basics
  3. Focal Length: Angle of View
  4. Focal Length: Normal Lenses

    John Greengo goes in-depth on the difference focal lengths make when shooting with a Nikon® lens.

  5. Focal Length: Wide Angle Lenses
  6. Focal Length: Telephoto Lens
  7. Focal Length Rule of Thumb
  8. Field of View
  9. Aperture Basics
  10. Equivalent Aperture
  11. Depth of Field
  12. Maximum Sharpness
  13. Starburst
  14. Hyper Focal Distance
  15. Nikon Mount Systems
  16. Nikon Cine Lenses
  17. Nikon Lens Design
  18. Focusing and Autofocus with Nikon Lenses
  19. Nikon Lens Vibration Reduction
  20. Image Quality
  21. Aperture Control and General Info
  22. Nikon Standard Zoom Lenses
  23. Nikon Super Zoom Lenses
  24. Nikon Wide Angle Lenses
  25. Nikon Telephoto Zoom Lenses
  26. 3rd Party Zooms Overview
  27. 3rd Party Zooms: Sigma
  28. 3rd Party Zooms: Tamron
  29. 3rd Party Zooms: Tokina
  1. Nikon Prime Lens: Normal
  2. Nikon Prime Lens: Wide Angle
  3. Nikon Prime Lens: Ultra-Wide
  4. Nikon Prime Lens: Short Telephoto
  5. Nikon Prime Lens: Medium Telephoto
  6. Nikon Prime Lens: Super Telephoto
  7. 3rd Party Primes: Sigma
  8. 3rd Party Primes: Zeiss
  9. 3rd Party Primes: Samyang
  10. Lens Accessories: Filters
  11. Lens Accessories: Lens Hood
  12. Lens Accessories: Tripod Mount
  13. Lens Accessories: Extension Tubes
  14. Lens Accessories: Teleconverters
  15. Macro Photography
  16. Nikon Micro Lens Selection
  17. Fisheye Lenses
  18. Tilt Shift Photography Overview
  19. Tilt Shift Lenses
  20. Building a Nikon System
  21. Making a Choice: Nikon Portrait Lenses
  22. Making a Choice: Nikon Sport Lenses
  23. Making a Choice: Nikon Landscape Lenses
  24. Nikon Lens Systems
  25. Lens Maintenance
  26. Buying and Selling Lenses
  27. Final Q&A
  28. What's in the Frame



Outstanding class! This is a must own. You will refer back to this class many times during your photog career. John has put a ton of work into this class and it shows. Being able to download the slides and other Nikon glass info is wonderful. Even if you're not a Nikon shooter you will still gleam tons of information from this class, John covers in great detail the strength and weaknesses of each lens and when you might consider using it. I was expecting a good class, but this turned into an epic class. I watched multiple videos several times. The only bad thing I can say is I "had" to order a few more lenses! Thank you John Greengo for making a truly amazing class.

Fusako Hara

Finally I have some sense of what lens do, know what I have, what I would like to have, what lens to use, and how I can get images that I see. Best part of this session is it was made so clear, simple, logical, and practical. I am glad that I purchased this product. Now, I am going to look for more from John Greengo so I can take better understanding and take better images. Thank You.


What an excellent class! Honest, unbiassed and extremely thorough reviews and descriptions of the main Nikon lenses. I am considering purchasing a couple of lenses for my Nikon DSLR and before I saw this I couldn't find an answer to my questions: price vs quality, which one's the best lens for my needs. I'm not a technical person and I can never understand complicated reviews that you find online, but John Greengo explains in a entertaining way so that anybody can follow. Thank you!