How can I prevent my lens hood from causing dark corners?

Question

I'm new to photography and I have a lens hood on my Canon Rebel XT camera/lens.  I'm getting these dark corners on some of my photographs.  No doubt they're coming from the lens hood.

What am I doing wrong?  The lens hood is a Bower 58mm Pro Hood.

I've since abandoned using lens hoods on my camera.

Rob Clement · Accepted Answer

You don't have to abandon the lens hood!!! Hoods are good a blocking the sun, eliminating solar flares AND most importantly protecting your glass.

Do this...set your camera on a tripod (or table or pile of books or anything stable) and go to your widest angle avaible to you, with the lens hood on, and shoot a picture. Then zoom in a touch and do it again. Then again and again until you have you lens zoomed all the way out.

Now, go back through your images. Somewhere within the focal range of your lens the vignetting (dark corners) will disappear. Check the first image that is clear of the hood and check your meta data for the focal length. This will give you an idea of how wide you can go without the problem.

A couple of points:

1.You may have the wrong hood for that lens. A shorter hood may work better for you.

2.Some hoods have two long flanges and two short ones. If yours does, then try placing the long flanges on the top/bottom side of the lens rather than the left/right. Because of the native aspect ration of your film plane (chip, sensor, pick a name) (i.e., it is a horizontal rectangle) the long flanges will appear at the left and right of the frame rather than the top and bottom. This is because there is less sensor to "see" the hood on the top and bottom.

Good luck...don't give up.

Guffa · Answer

I can see two reasons for the hood to block the view:

The hood is not correctly positioned.
The hood is not made for the angle of view of the lens.

From what I could find, it's a tulip shaped hood. The shape is supposed to make it usable with wide angle lenses, but it has to be turned to a specific angle to work properly. The longer petals should be at the top and bottom.

I haven't found any information about what angle of view the hood is made for. If you have the 18-55mm lens, the angle of view is quite wide at 18mm, but the hood should still work in the longer half of the zoom range. The solution for using a hood at the shorter zoom end would then be to get a hood specifically made for that lens, but that's of course a lot more expensive than a generic hood.

Jane T · Answer

Also remember that standard lens hoods will cause problems, if you use them with the wrong lenses, if you are using the standard "18-50mm" which comes with the Rebels, unless the hood specificity supports the lens with it wide open you will have a problem.

A quick search on Amazon shows your hood is not suitable for an 18-50mm hood, so you will need to purchase the correct one for your lens.

How can I prevent my lens hood from causing dark corners?

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