Shaving the Lens Hood off Tokina 10-17mm Lens

Not a job for the faint hearted ! In order to increase the FOV on my new Tokina 10-17mm lens, I had to shave the lens hood off. This enables me to shoot a 360 degree panorama in only 4 shots, which makes hand held shots easier as well as aerial shots.

Although I got the lens on special offer for £400, its still a lot of money to burn. So after careful consideration and lots of reading from helpful tutorials posted on the internet, I achieved the cleanest of cuts possible, actually my partners father is an engineer and had a lathe in his garage. He laughed me out of the room when I suggested a humble hacksaw.

First we put electrical tape on a flat surface and with a compass outline the shape of the lens. After cutting this out we had a perfect fit to cover the lens and protect the surface. Next we applied more tape and cardboard around the side of the lens so it could be gripped in the lathe without marking. Using a lathe you can very accurately take cuttings off the lens to 1000th of a millimeter. Next was the nerve racking part as I was’nt sure the lens could handle being turned round at speed for some time,  anyway we carefully took the cast aluminium hood away, and slowly but surely found a point just past the lens glass that meant the hood was not protruding anymore.

Here are some phone images from our work flow.

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