Canon: 70-200/4IS lens hood frustration

The 70-200 with the 7D is a great combination, actually it’s an outstanding combination, instead of great. Great lens, great camera, they go perfectly together. It’s a very well balanced match, except for 1 point of frustration, the lens hood. Yes, the original lens hood provided by Canon, the ET-74.

I have a lot of problems putting the lens shade inside out in reverse to place the camera in the bag. It turns out that I’m not the only one to have this problem and Phil Mitchell gave me the solution.

To put it on in reverse I hold the camera in my right hand in landscape mode with lens pointing away. I hold the lens cap in my left hand with the ‘Canon ET-74 …’ label facing up - the dash in ‘ET-74’ should be at the very top. Slide lens cap on until it stops and twist counter clockwise.

To put it on normally I do the same but with the lens cap writing pointing to the left.

Regards, Phil.

Works great. Many problems and frustrations are operator problem. But this one can be blamed on Canon. Why don’t they give instructions to accompany the lens?