Dark spots...

is it my lens hood?

what size is your lens, nothing in the exif details, it probably is

I have a 18-55 and 55-200mm. I took one with the hood off and didn't have the issue. But I also had clear ones with the hood

you shouldnt have it with those lenses, i never did with mine, are you only having the probs indoors?

Well, this is the first time I have really had the chance to use it other than these pictures (today). Just got it in the mail last week. I will shoot some nature scenes soon and go from there.

Looks like vignetting. Happens mostly at the wide end of a zoom. Is the lense hood one supplied with the lense or one you just bought one after looking at the catalog.

If it is not the hood, then it may be your hand. That can happen if you are not holding the camera below the lense, but above (as I do some times when focus sing manually).

If you were using the camera's flash for these pictures, you are getting lens hood shadows when you use the lens at a wider focal length. Also the bottom corners are not properly illuminated by the on-board flash.

The lens hood shouldn't do that. Just curious, do you have more than one filter on the lens, or perhaps a difference/larger filter than normal (UV + CPF?)? On the wide side of many zooms, if I have a thicker filter, or perhaps stack ND's, I'll get a touch of vignetting from the filter edge. It doesn't look like flash shadow as that should extend across the entire bottom edge, thought the bottom right photo may exhibit some of that. IMO it's definitely either the hood (which should be sized appropriately not to do that) or a filter edge.

All hoods are designed to work with the lens that they come on. Is it possible that you have a different hood on?

If it is a screw-in lens hood then that's your problem. Your lens hood has 4 lips. Two are longer than the others. The long lips should be at noon and six o'clock. With a bayonet hood you don't have this problem.

Aftermarket hood, CPL filter.

tcepilot said:

Aftermarket hood, CPL filter.

Click to expand...

Take both of them off and then shoot. Should not be any problem.
Next to diagnose who the culprit is
1. Shoot with the CPL only.
2. Shoot with Hood only.
3. Shoot with both.

You will know the culprit - CPL, Hood or Combination. I suspect Aftermarket Hood, as it is a common to just to get a Hood that fits, without checking for its suitability. I have 3 lenses with 52mm filter thread - 50mm, 35mm and 18-55, so one hood could fit these lenses, but three hoods are very different.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'll give it a shot and report back with the culprit.