Newly purchased D3300

John94Mc

Hi,

I have recently been gifted a Nikon D3300 with a dx vr af-p nikkor 18-55mm lens. I'm curious about buying a lens hood, but I can't seem to find anywhere to buy them in Ireland. I was looking at the Hb-n106 bayonet lens hood, is this the best and only one available to me? Furthermore, I'm looking to purchase a rain cover for it, can you recommend any? Also I'm wondering what would be the next lens I should be looking at to give me a broad range to take pictures?

Thanks for any advice,
John

bruto

The new 18-55mm lens on this model has a non-rotating front element (very nice thing to have, by the way) and can use a "petal" type hood. I believe the requisite hood is the HB-69, which is a bayonet hood. Nikon has it for something like $25, and there are some third party makers with it cheaper. I notice B&H has a "Vello" brand, for example. I don't know what is available in Ireland, but that's the number I think you need. If you can do mail order business with major American vendors, try B&H or Adorama. You might find what you need on Amazon too.

As an alternative, you can always use a screw-on round hood of the correct size. For DX frame, I have found that a screw-on hood made for 35mm in full frame works well. On my older 18-55mm (which does have a rotating front element and no bayonet provision) I use an old Nikon HN-3 metal hood. This screws into the front filter thread, and I leave it on all the time.

Edit to add: by the way, Nikon is unique, I think, in that their lens caps are designed to snap correctly inside a hood. This means that if you get the correct bayonet hood, it will invert over the lens when not in use, and you can cap it. If you bet the old style screw in hood, the cap will snap inside it.

I do recommend that you find a hood, because flare can be a subtle degrader of images, and digital sensors seem often to be bothered by stray light. The overall contrast of zooms is a bit less than of primes to start with, so everything you can do to get stray light out of the image will be to the good.

If you're shopping for a hood in the parts bins, make sure you try it at the shortest focal length and the widest open aperture. That's when vignetting will occur if it's too narrow. Look for dark corners in the frame. If you can't see any sign of darkening at the corners when the lens is set to 18mm and f/3.5, it's good.

I'm not sure about a rain cover. I generally try not to take my D3200 out in the rain at all, but use a plastic bag when need be.

For a next lens, it might depend on whether you need more aperture (a nice fast prime) or more reach (a complementary zoom). With the 18-55mm, a nice complement is either the 55-200mm or 55-300mm zoom, very similar in overall performance to the kit lens. That gets you into longer portrait and telephoto territory, and gets lots of coverage.

For other possibilities, you may want to wait and see how the kit lens performs, and what you do and don't need in addition. Not everyone likes the same prime lengths, and some people want more macro, or more reach, etc. depending on what you like to photograph.

John94Mc

Wow, thank you very much for the detailed response. Are you sure that the hb-69 would fit? When I was searching online it seemed that the hb-n160 would be the correct one?

bruto

I just realized that the latest version is different, and you're right, the HB 69 was for the earlier one and the HB-n 160 is for this one. The barrel on the newer one is larger, and so, it seems, is the filter size, up to 55mm from the old 52mm, which means my earlier suggestion of the screw in hood won't work either. You might find a 55mm screw in hood for some other lens, but I suspect the HB-n 160is going to be your easiest solution. If you can't readily find the correct hood, you could probably find a wide angle 55mm screw in hood. There used to be, and should still be, generic folding rubber hoods that actually work pretty well. Just make sure you get a wide enough angle.

John94Mc

Thanks Bruto, I had no idea I would find this quantity and quality of information when I posted the question. Cheers for the help, I'm looking forward to exploring the camera and what it offers.

Thanks again.

Haggis

I'm guessing you bought your kit from Argos? They are using the af-p 18-55mm lens. Have you tried using raw images? My neighbor only got purple images using raw!? He got his money back. Just curious if he was unlucky.

bruto

On the D3200, I certainly do not have any problem with Raw images, nor does my wife on the D7100, and I've never heard any reports on this for the D3300, so I'm guessing the problem was in the sample not the model, or with the software reading the file.

I always shoot Raw and convert as needed using either Nikon software or one of the freeware image converters that reads files using the Windows Raw codec.

Haggis

I used NX2 and it said profile not recognized. Latest firmware for D3300 and Corel paint shop pro X6. The photos on Raw were like a purple filter was overlaid. Lens AF-P 18-55MM G non VR. J peg were excellent.
Strange but true. After reading up on this lens it seems that it only works on about 3 cameras. The firmware was updated recently to allow the D3300 to use this version of the 18-55mm, but something is still wrong.