How Many Photographers Does it Take to Screw On a Leica Lens Hood?
Update: about 30% of the population is apparently unable to understand humor (especially the elderly). I didn’t quite believe that, but after getting email on this post this morning showing no understanding at all (taking it all totally seriously and literally), I am now persuaded that the 30% figure may be true and perhaps under-stated. Heck, the title and first line double entendre alone seem to have been missed right off the bat. Criticize it as good or bad or lame humor wrapped around a real problem—that’s fair—but zero recognition is prima facie proof and something that will inform my interactions in the future as to where someone is “coming from”. I mention all this just because some communications now make more sense to me, and therefore I can adjust appropriately, knowing the possible context. I asbolutely do not intend it as a put down of anyone—all of us have limitations and blind spots of one kind or another (I just proved that in the post, I think, for myself!).
PS: it was a sealed box as far as I could tell. However, the screw threads look like they have a whitish powder in some places. So I’m just going to write it off as a defective lens hood and the gaffer tape solves the problem for now.
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Well, it would have to be a really big hood for starters.
You can’t make this stuff up...
I was going to take along the Leica Q2 for some nice dilettante snapshots on my trip for times when I otherwise might just be scratching my ass, but I am flummoxed by not being able to screw on the lens hood, to get it on. No, I mean screw it on.
But I screwed up and screwed the pooch: I unscrewed the hood, and now every time I screw it back on, it screws me by stopping screwing—at about 1/4 turn shy of finishing, becoming too tight to move. So it’s screwed on—diagonally, and I’m screwed it seems. WTF.
I have now spent 15 minutes trying to screw in the f*ing lens hood and I have failed. I’ve carefully backed it off and tried every which way to start the screws threading, always the same result.
I even scrutinized the user manual (“CAUTION: in case the lens hoods screws you, please find your nearest gun dealer, and shoot yourself, you moron! Ask for help loading it, since you’re too dumb to screw on a lens hood! TIP: don’t stick your f*ing thumb[screw] in the hole-end.”).
Screw it! I’ll just be scrupulous about having something that works and instead take my Sony A7R IV with the Zeiss Loxia 25m f/2.4. It’s just not worth screwing around with screwball design.
It still amazes me that anyone can design a camera with a slippery non-grip surface lacking any leverage for fingers and thumb, along with a storage card slot right next to the bottom tripod mount hole, so that getting at the card requires removing a camera plate with an allen wrench. So if you want to see state of the art anti-design, check out the Leica Q2.
Update: screw it on less than fully! Stroke of genius! And nothing beats the schmoozy elegance of securing a lens hood (or diapers) with gaffer tape @AMAZON. Every Leica Q2 should be supplied with a roll (additional colors available in 2-foot-long rolls at $299.99 each). Bonus feature!!!!!! With gaffer tape installed in this screwphisticated way, the push-on lens hood cover stops falling off constantly—whoah!!!!! I should totally work for the Leica R&D department.
See also: Leica Q2 Initial Impressions.
