Lens Cap Photography is Making a Comeback

Lens Cap Photography is Making a Comeback

It turns out that an avant-garde camera technique from the 1960s has found its way back into the hearts of today's Instagram generation of photographers. Lens capping is the act of purposely creating an extreme underexposure (EUE) by leaving the lens cap on.

While underexposing an image or exposing to the left (ETTL) is nothing new to most of us, "lens capping" as it is being called, is. Most of us think of a lens cap as a protection layer for the expensive glass on our lenses. While this is the primary role of these advanced logo bearing discs, it is not the only way to utilize them.

A number of outside the box photographers have started taking artistic shots featuring the back side of the cap. The recent revitalization occurred after some old rolls of film were found in an unearthed time capsule and developed. The images were all exactly the same featuring a beautiful and rich dark black. An accompanying notebook explained the many wonderful adventures the photographer had been on and described in vivid detail each scene where a photo had been taken.

The perfect blackness of the photos along with the mind's ability to imagine details resulted in an entirely new and exciting form of photography.

Besides being unique and beautiful, photos captured using the lens capping technique work well regardless of what f/stop, shutter speed, or ISO you use. Another bonus is that very little post-production is ever needed for these images and they look equally good from the cheapest to the most expensive camera out there. This makes it fun and enjoyable for beginners still mastering their camera settings. To get the shot though you will probably have to turn off your autofocus. Fear not though, there are a number of videos on YouTube covering that complex process so we will not get into that here.

Have you ever tried your hand at lens capping or possible pitch black photography? Share your results in the comments. Next week we will be covering (or not covering for that matter) overexposing to pure white.

Michael B. Stuart's picture

Michael B. Stuart is a photographer at Stu Stu Studio in Lewiston, New York. Besides shooting weddings with his wife Nicole his specialties include long exposure, abstract monochrome creations, architecture, and bokeh. Work has been featured online by Adobe, Flickr, Google, and 500px with the most popular photo receiving over 950 million views.

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There seems to be a bug with exact 5 min exposures. Try a bit over or under and report your results back to the group.

Not bad but dang. If only you could capture that Vanta Black Vibe.

Are the making backdrops with that stuff yet or what?

Nah I think they were mumbling something along the lines of "too expensive". Pfft. Whatever that means. They just want to keep it to them selves :/

I've been a master of this for years! But most people don't realize how critical it is to set your black balance before taking the shot. You really have to have the correct temperature of your blackness source in order to get a truly natural black!

Black balance = crucial!

Did you hear about the scandal at last year's Lens Cap Challenge contest? It turned out that the top 5 prize winners have now all been disqualified. It seems that they invented a plug-in for Photoshop that allowed them to synthesize their photos on a computer. The photos weren't even shot using a lens cap! The contest sponsor, The Dark Image, is suing for recovery of the prizes and have banned the 5 photographers for life!

I wish I could thumbs up that comment 10x! Lol
Such a disgrace to the craft.

Was it necessary to publish two lame and unfunny articles?

Humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Besides, what's wrong with having a little fun? Especially on April Fool's Day???

Necessary < Going for it.
Thanks for reading.
By next year Chrome is supposedly making an extension to block any April Fools content for those that are tired of all the unfunniness. Sounds promising.

ssshhhh.... April Fool's day is over.

I'm slightly late to the party but someone needs knee capped...

I thought this post and discussion was going to be on pin hole photography... boy was I wrong!
Then I checked the date this article was written.

Nice gotcha!
Cheers from Montréal.

😂 Both this article and the comments are fantastic. This made my day, thank you all.