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I was in need for a lens hood for my telephoto lens. Being the DIY guy that I am, I decided not to purchase a new lens hood, but instead build my own....for cheap or free. It's more fun that way. After some quick googling, I found numerous websites with methods on how to build lens hoods. One of the few that caught my eye was from a website called enchantingkerala.org, which provided a method using a plastic beach cup, the one kids use when building sand castles.

The cool thing about this method was that the cup was made from a good strong plastic material, and the size and shape was almost identical to the original lens hood.

Using the guide that I found, I managed to build two lens hoods using some old fast food drink cups, the ones you get with a special order. I will show you how I did it.

You will need a few tools and items to help complete the project.

Plastic Cup or Similar object. - The cup I used was roughly the shape of the original lens hood.

Ruler or Measuring Tape

Mini hacksaw blade or Hacksaw

Knife/File

Sand paper

Adhesive

Filter ring

Black Spray Paint

The first thing I did was find the measurements of the original lens hood, height circumference etc, from the manufacturer's website. I then used these measurements and marked them on the plastic cup.

I then cut off the top and bottom of the cup using the hacksaw. The size at the bottom of my cup was close to the filter that I had, so I only had to take a little from the bottom. This allowed the filter to fit tight in the lens hood. The cup was beginning to look like a lens hood already.

I then used the knife to shave off any hard or chipped plastic, which might have been left from the hacksaw blade. After that, I used sandpaper to make the new hood smooth and ready to be painted.

The paint I used was some black Matt spray paint that I had lying around, which bonded well to the plastic. 

Once the paint dried, I then attached my filter ring to the end of the cup, and used some glue to make sure it stayed secure.

The end result was much more than I had expected. Now you too can build your own DIY lens hood following my guide above. Not only does it look a little like the original hood, it works just as well.