A quick aside, and yes I voted. Chuckgoolsbee, why not start a brand new thread here in the Accessories forum? There are some suggestions within some threads but it would be great to have a thread devoted to lens hoods for this lens.
This is the one I have ... New Metal 46mm Screw-in Standard Lens Hood + Cap E46 EDIT: ... and here's what it looks like on the 20/1.7.
Absolutely, yes. Reading the comments here I see I use the exact same hood as Ron. But... seeing the poll result made me surprised. More users not using a hood than user doing so. I wonder what the result would have been in Panasonic had supplied a hood? /Jonas
The 20 supposedly doesn't produce flare even when the sun hits the front lens. Although I admit the hood above looks very nice, it degrades the compactness of the combo a bit.
Hoods are not just for stopping the sun shining directly onto the front element. Any bright object (e.g. white clouds) that has a "line of sight" to the front element can reduce the scene contrast. It'd be nice to think that the 20mm/1.7 is completely immune to this, but I find that hard to believe. Also the hood has obvious physical protection characteristics as well. It's a shame Panasonic didn't provide an option for a dedicated hood with bayonet mount outside the filter thread. But at least with round hoods like these you can easily rotate the polarising filter the hood's screwed into. That is, if your hood doesn't vignette the image when on the end of a polariser!
i use a 'standard' hood, bought on ebay, from heavystar, the one w/o the cap included. (i never use caps)
