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Fully extended

Hi,

I’ve had a couple of these screw on 58mm fit three-stage collapsible rubber lens hoods laying around for ages, so long in fact that I can’t remember what I bought them for. 🙂 I thought I’d try one with my M.Zuiko 12-45mm zoom lens. The advantages over the proprietary lens hood for me are two-fold. First it enables me to easily rotate the attached slim-fit CPL filter with a hood attached and secondly it works very well in conjunction with my camera rain cover which has an elasticated fitting at the lens end. I tested and, importantly, when fully collapsed, it doesn’t vignette at the wide angle end of the zoom range. Purely to save space in my bag whilst travelling I’ve left my Olympus hood attached in the reversed position at least temporarily, to act as a backup hood should I get any issues with the rubber hood. It won’t last forever but, at about £3-4 UK it’s cheap to replace when I need to and I already have a spare. I’ve tested it out on a couple of recent outings and it works well.

I paid about £17 UK new for this rain cover on Ebay a few years back. They’re made by a UK company that also make all sorts of rain covers for baby buggies etc.. So I thought they’d know more than a bit about keeping things dry and if they can keep someone’s baby dry from the rain then they can keep my “baby” dry 🙂 and it does so. It’s turned out to be the best I ever used, very quick to fit with an elasticated front end which stretches over the hood to fit and can’t slip off and a draw string at the camera body end. Roomy enough to take my longest lenses and very easy to turn a zoom ring through the fabric, sometimes the simplest things work the best. Having a weather-sealed camera and lens isn’t reason enough to get it soaking wet if one has the means to keep it dry. I regard camera weather-sealing a secondary line of defence against water ingress and not a primary one.

By-the-way the camera half-case, stylish as it is, isn’t there purely for cosmetic reasons. It adds a bit more grip and protection to the camera and, having had a broken latch on the hinged battery access cover in the past before I replaced it, the flap with side fastening popper holds the battery snuggly in place should it ever fail again. Lastly, the base of the camera has a push-fit rubber cover which covers the contacts for the optional grip when not fitted. Although not overly prone to doing so it cannot fall off and get lost with the half-case fitted.

Kind regards

Leigh