You must have seen the flower like contraption fixed in front of many telephoto lenses. Sometimes, u find them on normal lenses also; what do they do ? If you have had the chance to see a professional movie camera at work, you would have seen a device like an elephants ear fixed to the front of the camera; these are called matte boxes.

Lens Hood

Matte Box

Lens Hoods

The basic purpose of these devices are to prevent glare and lens flares. Now, coming to lens hoods, again, there are different variants. The basic variant is similar to a lamp shade; these are used on lens that work in higher parts of the tele zoom region; because the angle of vision is narrow at these regions, they wont cause vignetting by blocking the field of view of the lens . Now a days, we have lenses that can range from wide to telephoto regions. When using such a lens, we cant use the normal lens hoods because, they will cause vignetting by coming in the field of view of the lens.

Design Considerations

This problem is solved by using specially designed lens hoods that are designed by taking into consideration the vertical and horizontal angle of vision separately. Usually, the horizontal angle of vision is greater than the vertical and sunlight coming from the vertical angle. This prompts for a design that is more like a petal or a flower.  The hood for each lens needs to be designed by taking into consideration the angles of that lens to prevent vignetting.  Lens hood also serve the purpose of protecting the lens from physical damage. Some lens hoods for prosumer camera models have the provision of fixing filters or teleconverters on them. In the world of macro photography, shorter lens hoods are available that have rings of LEDs fixed to them that enable proper lighting of the subject at close ranges. These hoods are extremely versatile and provide a better degree of freedom for the photographer. They sometimes have the battery packs etc integrated on them; this can some time make the camera a bit more front heavy affecting stability.

Matte Box

These are used mainly in the video segments than in the stills segment because, they give the ability to adjust the  length of the fins. The fins are called French Flags and the ability to adjust the french flags give them a higher degree of freedom and flexibility. They are used in still photography also but less prominently and are mostly limited to controlled environments like a studio; this is mainly because of the big size of the matte box. They also serve the purpose of providing a place to fix glass or plastic filters. Matte boxes are used more in the video segment because, they are mostly shot in controlled environments. Matte boxes are sometimes made by the photographer himself to suite his needs. There are companies manufacturing them also and mostly, they are not camera or lens dependent because, they have adjustable components.

A hybrid of the two was developed that gave adjustable petals on a lens hood but, they did not do too well and have gone off the market now.

Without Hood

So when buying a lens for your DSLR, it is recommended that you buy its lens hood also because, it does give you an advantage when shooting in direct sunlight.  It will give you better contrast and your pictures will look more vibrant when you use lens hoods because, it prevents angular sunlight from falling on your lens’s front elements. The photo given below should explain better.

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