The JoLo Lens Hood for The Aero lens

A lens "hood" is usually round or rectangular and protrudes from the lens. Some may require a special mounting and are generally available only from the lens or camera manufacturer. As the Aero lens was originally designed for air-reconnaissance with the camera mounted in the plane with the lens aimed to the earth, no lens hood was necessary. However for its new task, the Aero lens needs some device to keep the unwanted light from the lens surface. There exist some options to tackle such a problem.

1) A "shade" can be anything that shades or "flags" light from entering the lens. Shades can be found on matte boxes or fitted from improvised materials such as construction paper or aluminum foil or you can use your hand.

2) A compendium is a bellows with a metal lens holder that can be placed and attached on the lens and pulled out up to a certain length. A filter holder for 4x4 inch gelatin filters completes the item.

3) A matte box is a camera accessory that essentially does the same thing as a lens hood and is also mount in front of the lens, but usually includes adjustable fins called French flags. These can be moved and adjusted to reduce unwanted lens flare caused by lights or the sun. An advantage of the matte box is that original lens filters can be used.

4) The most effective way however, is using a tailor made lens hood such as the JoLo 70 mm lens hood specially made for use with the 7 inch Aero Lens.

The JoLo 70 mm lens hood prevents lens flare that means stray light from falling on the huge Aero lens surface. Together with the right filter mounted it will produce a very strong effect and greatly increase the contrast.

The new indispensable 70 mm JoLo Professional Lens hood. Filters can be placed on front or backside of the holder.
Made out of light 4 mm aluminium fits perfectly to the Kodak 7 inch Aero lens.
Including knurled nut attachment and hex fixing screw.
The integrated filter holder is part of the lens hood which has been manufactured out of one piece of aluminium.
Please ask for more details, or order now by using the order form.

As mentioned before, the advantage of the matte box or compendium is the use of original lens filters. However, original Aero lens filters has become very rare and if available they only fit to the front of the flat Kodak 7" Aero lens shade, without any additional feature to reduce unwanted light. To solve this problem I designed the JoLo lens Hood with integrated filter holder.

In certain circumstances filters are really indispensable. Here an example with and without a polarization filter.
By eliminating reflections, the polarizing filter will tend to make water and other reflective surfaces more transparent.
Left photo taken with the 7 inch Aero lens without polarization filter.
Right photo equipped with the polarization filter mounted into the JoLo lens hood.

On the left photo the Aero lens bezel with notches and on the right photo an Aero lens bezel with screws.
This flat Aero lens bezel is the base to attach the JoLo 70 mm Lens Hood which has a special mount to fit exactly to both types of the Aero lenses.

The lens hood slips easily over the original Aero lens mount and drops exactly on its place. The lens hood can be fixed to the Aero mount with the Allen hex screw. Please make sure the Allen screw or Hex screw does not protrude on the in side when slipping the hood over the Kodak shade. Once the shade has found its place on the Kodak shade, you may turn the Allen screw tight to fix the hood to the lens. It only takes a few seconds to mount the lens hood, ready to protect your exposures for stray light.

Integrated Filter holder

Even when using a very slow film you cannot shoot with the Aero lens wide open in bright daylight.
If you do not shoot wide open, you would miss the special effects which makes this lens so spectacular and exclusive.
Luckily there are special ND filters reducing the light in such a way that you'll be able to shoot the way you want it with the lens wide open!
To mount these indispensable filters, the special JoLo Lens Hood has been developed. You wont find a better and more effective solution.

The JoLo 77 mm filter holder is integrated in the JoLo lens hood right in front of the Aero lens and the 77 mm filter can be easy mounted on the front as well as on the back side of the lens hood.
The 77 mm mount accepts all available 77 mm filters including circular polarization filters.

Decreasing the depth of field by allowing wider apertures to be used, in turn helping to separate subjects from their background.
Reducing the effective ISO of high-speed film (above ISO 400) and the ND Filter allow it to be used outdoors in bright situations.
Both of the above mentioned situations require the help of a ND filter.

A Speed Aero user in the heath of Sierra Leone... ....I held back on the shooting until I was happy with the right camera and lens combination. I decided that Aero/Graphic would be well suited to the task. I eventually acquired a decent lens and camera. Thankfully I came across your site and the excellent mount you have designed! The speed graphic is still fairly portable even with the large lens fitted. An essential feature of your system [in my opinion] is filter mount, with such a fast lens particularly in bright equatorial sunlight its really useful to be able to fit a ND filter.