Not another lens hood?
07th August 2011
I don't know whether I am unique amongst hockey photographers but I have a real lens hood issue. They are very expensive and very easy to lose.
A couple of years ago I was shooting at the Wagener Stadium in Amsterdam when I noticed that the very hot weather was making one of my lens hoods expand so that it was no longer a tight fit on the lens. The inevitable happened, and somewhere between the pitch and the media centre I lost the hood. I think it cost about £30 to replace.
The lens hood on the Nikon 70-200 f2,8 is supposed to lock into place, but recently I heard the familiar sound of plastic bouncing off concrete as it dropped off for the second time in the day. I was using two cameras at the time and had the lens attached to my D700 which was hanging around my waist on the Black Rapid strap. I had been working mostly on grass that afternoon but, as luck would have it, both times it came off it was on a hard surface where I heard it hit the deck. On a previous occasions when this happened I was at Wembley Arena, where a group of people coming down a flight of stairs knocked the lens hood off. The hood fell several flights before reaching the bottom and I had to go back and retrieve it.
Big pro lenses seem to suffer from lens hood issues as well. Several owners of Nikon 400mm lenses only have half the lens hood fitted - they've broken the other half and don't want to fork out the huge price for a replacement. The securing nut on my 300mm f2.8 became detached two months ago and the replacement for the nut was over £20 (inc post).
As anyone who gets involved in sports photography will find, nothing connected with pro kit is ever cheap.
A couple of years ago I was shooting at the Wagener Stadium in Amsterdam when I noticed that the very hot weather was making one of my lens hoods expand so that it was no longer a tight fit on the lens. The inevitable happened, and somewhere between the pitch and the media centre I lost the hood. I think it cost about £30 to replace.
The lens hood on the Nikon 70-200 f2,8 is supposed to lock into place, but recently I heard the familiar sound of plastic bouncing off concrete as it dropped off for the second time in the day. I was using two cameras at the time and had the lens attached to my D700 which was hanging around my waist on the Black Rapid strap. I had been working mostly on grass that afternoon but, as luck would have it, both times it came off it was on a hard surface where I heard it hit the deck. On a previous occasions when this happened I was at Wembley Arena, where a group of people coming down a flight of stairs knocked the lens hood off. The hood fell several flights before reaching the bottom and I had to go back and retrieve it.
Big pro lenses seem to suffer from lens hood issues as well. Several owners of Nikon 400mm lenses only have half the lens hood fitted - they've broken the other half and don't want to fork out the huge price for a replacement. The securing nut on my 300mm f2.8 became detached two months ago and the replacement for the nut was over £20 (inc post).
As anyone who gets involved in sports photography will find, nothing connected with pro kit is ever cheap.
