One of my favorite things about the Fuji 23mm F/2.8 pancake lens that came with my new X-E5 is the incredibly easy press-fit lens cap that comes with the adorable, tiny screw on hood. Small center-pinch lens caps are much too fiddly. Big ones are fine – you can plam the whole lens cap and squeeze from the sides, and it comes off with no worries about your fingers hitting the front element and leaving a smudge. Small ones – you kinda HAVE to use your fingertips, and the process is very fiddly if you’re in a rush to, you know, get the shot. Long story short, I prefer lens caps you can just rip off quickly, blindly, and with muscle memory, and tiny center-pinch caps are not that.
Which brings me to my new favorite lens, the Voigtländer 18mm Color-Skopar for Fuji XF. It’s super compact, beautiful, well built, and fun to use. It, too, comes with an adorable little screw-on lens hood. I’m not completely convinced it does much for flaring, but they certainly put the effort in with a matte black flocking on the interior surface.
It also really complicates the lens cap situation. Without the hood, the lens comes with a center-pinch cap that’s already below my threshold for “too fiddly.” With the hood, there’s a center threaded section that a very stylish but INCREDIBLY cumbersome aluminum cap can screw onto.
When I realized how much I loved the 23mm cap, I decided I had to make my own for the Voigtländer out of TPU. It took about 3 more iterations than I expected it to, but the end result is, as far as I’m concerned, perfect. It features a molded tab so you can quickly by feel alone pop it off with a thumb. It’s deep enough to fit over the lens with the hood on (which is the main point), and flexible enough that it’ll work even with the OEM cap screwed in (though, why would you?). It’s got a nice proud detent that positively locks on to the knurling of the hood and won’t easily come off by accident if that’s in place, but it’s also got enough friction to be used without the hood on the smooth lip of the filter thread (much more likely to fall off in a bag, I fear). Because it’s TPU, there’s virtually no chance it’ll break, and if you drop your camera lens-first, it ought to absorb a fair bit of impact. For a bit of flair, I debossed the Voigtländer logo, even though it means now I’m definitely not going to be selling these.
Believe me when I tell you it’s very satisfying to pop on and off. So satisfying I might have to make more for some of my other lenses. A rainy day project success!
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