A patent showing a new type of lens cap/lens hood that stays affixed to the lens has appeared from Canon as been uncovered by Canon News.
This lens cap design stays attached to the lens and also doubles as a lens hood for convenience.
This design may have some usability concerns with dedicated lens hoods and filters, but could still be the right solution for some people.
From Japan Patent Application 2019-113645:
The present invention works as a lens hood function at the time of shooting and as a lens protection function at the time of non-shooting, thus eliminating the need for lens cap attachment / removal and barrier opening / closing operations. .
For example the Ricoh LC-1.
One has to move four parts to open the lens, rather than one.
If one of the hinges breaks, the customer has to leave the lens in a lab to be fixed, rather than buy a cheap plastic cap.
It isn't a real lens hood replacement, because it doesn't cover the corners. Also, the hood length isn't necessarily equal to half the front element's radius.
it's just a lens cap, it can be taken off the camera.
You could build a lens cap with OIS - put a front element into the lens cap that worked with all lenses of that filter size. Then you can release lenses without the front elements and only have to pay for OIS once, rather than for every lens.
I'm sure that shouldn't be difficult, haha...
While I always use neutral filters (B&W 010 MRC consistently) I would like to have some further protection: I "lost" a 77 mm filter because some plastic element inside a jacked damaged the coating while I wore the camera under the jacked. And if it doubles as a simple (= not 100% perfect petal shaped) lens hood it would be welcome. I do not use lens hoods anymore - sometimes I use my hand but sometimes a would appreciate a third hand or that the hand is not in the image.
I've had very good luck with the on-line companies that will 3D print any file you send them. Most of the big ones have machines that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet they charge only about $25-50 an hour machine time. Best of both worlds.
Stratasysdirect has done high quality work for me (at work). (I'm just a customer, no connection otherwise)
Thanks for the tip / the URL! I am a very satisfied owner of a ZORTRAX M200 which can do very fine ABS prints but 1mm thickness is the minimum for stable constructions so it is maybe a good strategy to opimize my design and send it to the service provider you mentioned for doing a metal print.
With my printer I made my own glasses because I needed glasses where I can rotate the lenses: I have stronger cylindrical lenses with roughly 2.5 dpt. and I need to adapt the axis angle twice the day. While I can look very good with these glasses maybe i do not good look designwise, they are a little bit clumsy :) But the world is a world of compromises. And maybe I will let someone print a new version in titanium - titanium printers are not the cheapest investment for home use !
I smell a dash of sarcasm with that.. Can I have some more of that stuff, please... I am missing the point here. Please enlighten me :)
Thats a perfectly valid point to the robustness and reliability of this particular device. All of those little pieces, yikes. I for one just cram my 70+mm lenscaps in my back pocket or they just get pulled off in my thinktank bag when I'm getting the camera out. Lens hoods stay at home, too clunky.