Tim, those are excellent pics. Well done. Thank your for your effort, much appreciated.

I will be ordering mine directly. This is clearly a nice little hood, and it cannot hurt a thing, especially at under $50.

Your welcome Jeff.

It is so compact and looks good enough that I may leave it on all the time. It seems to help indoors also, easier to pull focus. I'm not sure that's the case outdoors yet, but like you say, it's got to help some.

Tim, I can see it would help indoors, and I would likely leave it on all of the time also. It looks great.

My Z5 viewfinder photo!
 

The viewfinder in these photo's looks much better than mine. I have attached a photo of mine with the brightness on high and the backlight on high. Hazy bright day.

Come on guys, this doesn't even make sense. Robert, yours looks like mine looks outdoors.

Tim are you doing anything besides hood to improve image? How about your settings?

I don't have the Fx with me right now, but it seems like the brightness is set a few notches above midway, turning brightness all the way up made things worse. In the display menu, I believe there's a setting to set the LCD on high or bright....this is on.

I'll look when I get home to see for sure.

EDIT: Brightness - 6 clicks past halfway point
LCD BL - Bright

LCD in Direct Sunlight
 

I've discovered something interesting. I was shooting outside in direct sunlight and had the LCD open. With the sunlight falling directly on the LCD, and at a certain angle, the sunlight seemed to reflect off of the LCD and produced an image that was very acceptable for composition purposes. Peaking is definitely required to confirm focus. With a hood over the LCD, the image was too weak to use.

Thanks guys, and thanks Tim for sharing your settings.

hoodman
 

Tragic story. I had a hoodman for 4 years, lost it, found it, packed it, moved house and can't find it!

Really miss it though.

Will get myself one of these Sony LCD shades for my FX1000 which by the way is my great mate now.

I have accepted its pitfalls as there are so many things to like about it the -'s are not so many as firest thought.

LCD screen whilst high res is still a bit small for me.

Martin.

I just made a prototype for the lcd screen of my Z5. I used the originitial Sony lcdhood. You can very easy take away the upper part. The rest is made of 3mm photo carton. The inside is wiith black felt. The lens is from the viewfinder of my old Mamiya 645 photocamera. The result is very good, only left and right 2 or 3 mm is missing.
Dirk PEL Karlsruhe Germany

With a lot of sowing help from my fantastic wife, I've made a comparable contraption, that attaches to the screen with velcro. I used the focusing ocular of an even older Mamyia: the C33. As you can see on the pics, I put the ocular out of the centre, more to the left, as I'm looking through my left eye when focusing. This way my Z7 (which has the same shape and LCD-screen size as the Z5) becomes a shouldermounted camera. Especially with the wide-angle convertor on, that is a blessing, because the combination is quite heavy.

Luc,
Shows very good! It was at my opinion a of compicated sewing.
Today i usedthe system for filming a rhododendron exposition. It worked fantastic.
de groeten van Dirk Pel

Yes, very complicated sewing! I rewarded my wife with her own camera, a Z5...
Groeten terug van de Belgische kust!

Great pics - can hood stay attached?
 

Thanks for these Tim - do I take it from the top photo that the hood can stay attached when the lcd is folded back in place? - I'm assuming it's folded back in the face-up position. Great if so, makes it worth the little extra.

Thanks, Paul

That would be correct Paul.