Print your own lens hood for free, using downloadable PDFs

Lens hoods get lost, and replacing them costs money. If you are looking for a quick solution to your lost lens hood, or just want to have another one, you should know that you can print lens hoods from PDF files, for free.

lenshoods.co.uk offers free PDFs you can download, with rounded and petal hood designs for a lot of lenses manufactured by Canon and other brands. They have a sister site with lens hood PDFs especially for APS-C DSLRs with 1.6 and 1.5 crop factors.
Given the often horrendous prices asked for what basically is a piece of plastic, this solution may come handy. A lens hood made out of paper may not be a durable solution but for sure it might save your day if you need one and do not want to spend the money for an original lens hood.

Printable lens hoods offer a number of advantages over their costly counterparts:

• Ultra compact – can be carried unfolded.
• No waiting to order one – simply download, print, cut-out and attach.
• Redundancy – don’t worry if you lose one; just print another!
• 100% recyclable.
• Can be modified to cater for different digital SLR sensor crop factors.
• Available in both ’rounded’ and ‘petal’ versions.