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How to Make a DIY Lens Hood to Eliminate Lens Flare

Not all lenses come with lens hoods, and that can mean you can suffer the effects of lens flare. This occurs when light is scattered across the glass elements of a lens, often caused by bright sunlight at a particular angle, and it produces coloured spots around your image. Lens hoods shade the lens, almost entirely stopping lens flare in the majority of situations.

Sometimes this can be used to creative effect, but for the majority of the time you’re going to want to get rid of it. Building your own DIY lens hood is a way around this problem, and this 2-minute tutorial from COOPH shows you how to do just that.

By recycling an old plastic bottle, whilst using some black spray paint, you can create your own “foldable” lens hood to work with whatever lens you need.

For more tips about handling lens flare, check out some of our tutorials:

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Will Nicholls
Will Nicholls

is a professional wildlife photographer and film-maker from the UK. He has won multiple awards for his work, including the title of Young British Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2009. Will runs a blog for nature photographers, Nature TTL, which provides tutorials and inspirational articles to readers. He also has a free eBook available called 10 Top Tips to Instantly Improve Your Nature Photos.

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