Lens hoods are wonderful. I hate lens hoods.

          The wonderful: If the sun shines directly into your lens you may get flare and or a washed out image (no contrast) or even an ugly color cast over parts of your image. Believe me, top photographers love shooting into the sun. Whenever the sun is at a lowish angle you may encounter this problem and when the sun is at lower angles is when we prefer to shoot; that is the good light. The lens hood is designed to shield the lens to prevent these problems and that is a very noble cause. They generally work very well.

          The hatred: I have a polarizing filter on my lenses most of the time (I will take the filter off when shooting straight into the sun to get a sun star or such as the filter may cause additional flare). Lens hoods prevent me from getting my fingers to my polarizing filter to turn it (especially on longer lenses because the lens hoods are longer too). Invariably I poke the filter with my finger when trying to rotate it through the front of the lens hood; placing a smudge on the filter. With some lens hoods I just cannot reach in far enough to have adequate control of the rotation of the filter. When I do manage to get my finger in there and rotate the filter, my hand is in the way and just about all I see in the viewfinder. This can be frustrating and has often led me to ill feelings towards the poor lens hood. The obvious solution of taking the lens hoof off, rotating the filter, and replacing the lens hood is often not a workable solution. Sometimes there is just not enough time to do so because the rainbow may be gone by the time you are ready.

          Therefore I have given up on using lens hoods for the most part. In fact, I no longer even carry a lens hood with me for certain lenses. Yet, I do not want to incur the problems of shooting without one. So what do I do to prevent the issues caused by a lack of a lens hood without using a lens hood? Firstly, I always take every landscape image by using a remote trigger device (timer, wired cable release, cell phone app, whatever works). I do not want to be touching my camera when it fires because that introduces movement and results in images not tack sharp. This also means that I can position myself anywhere close to the camera and still fire it. Once my shot is setup up and I am ready to take the image I take hold of the shutter release and I stand to the side of the camera. I place my head or my hand between the front of the lens and the sun, making sure that the front of the lens is in shade. Now I shoot. In most cases this works very well and solves the problems of not having a lens hood and it allows me to rotate my polarizer to hearts content.

          Disclaimer: there are situations where the sun may reflect into your lens from different places (snow banks for example) where this technique will not work. In such cases use a lens hood. For those of you who use DSLR's please cover your viewfinder when you step away as light may get in there and impact your exposure and image. When I was using a DSLR I would hold one hand to cover my viewfinder and the other or my head to make shade for me lens.

In this image the sun was low on the left. There was severe loss of contrast without shielding my lens. Using the technique mentioned above solves this issue. Yes, I use polarizers when not including sky as well.

          I hope this little trick helps you.