Cordell Wolking, a professional videographer, has designed a replacement lens cap from a videographer’s perspective, the CoverLens. He sent me one of these units to review. After playing around with it for a few days, I can advise you that if you ever lose your lens cap, you should consider getting a CoverLens. If you still have your lens cap, try to leave it laying around somewhere so you can then justify getting yourself a CoverLens.

This is quite a clever little product; it does the job of a lens cap (protecting the glass from getting scratched or wet or having rocks hit it or whatever) but it’s not exactly a cap, it’s more of a big shroud that fits around the front of the lens hood. I tried it on an HVX200 and a DVX100, and it works well. It certainly protects the lens. I’m not sure I’d want to mount it to the front of a bare lens without the lens hood in place; without the lens hood the cover could touch the glass, which means the inside pocket might scratch up a lens. But with the hood in place the CoverLens is held far enough away from the glass that that’s not an issue, and it works well as a lens protector. It works great on the HVX200; on the DVX100 it was less satisfactory because of the design of the DVX100’s lens hood. The DVX’s lens hood has cutout openings in the back, and that could let dust or water in; it’s my understanding that the CoverLens company is coming up with a deeper CoverLens design specifically to overcome such concerns. CoverLens claims it works well on all prosumer and professional cameras; I can’t see any reason to challenge that claim, it certainly looks like it would be right at home on any broadcast or prosumer unit I’ve used (with the only complication being the uniquely odd design of the DVX100’s lens hood).

So, assuming you lost your lens cap, now what? You could always just go get a cheap push-in cap from a photography store, and while that’s serviceable, where’s the fun in that? The CoverLens isn’t just a lens cap replacement. It also includes lots of useful goodies; everywhere you look there’s something new to discover packed inside.

For example, in the front pocket there’s some laminated cards, which I thought were very handy and rather useful. I wasn’t expecting the cards to be full professional equivalents, I mean, a full set of WarmCards costs almost twice as much as the entire CoverLens kit (including its cards, pen, lens cover and cloth). So I figured "hey, these are free, you could use ‘em in an emergency or something," right? I was quite pleasantly surprised at the white balance card; I tested it against my DSC CamBook’s CamWhite card, which is one of the purest white "white cards" you can get, and the CoverLens "white balance" card was spot-on. This is a very nice little white card! The gray card seems a little light, but overall the set of cards look like a great selection: it includes:

1. a white balance card
2. a gray card
3. a backfocus card
4. a couple of warm-balance cards
5. a cool-balance card
6. a Minus Green and a Plus Green card.

The cards look like they’re heavy-duty laminated and they come on a chain long enough to hang around your neck. Now, here’s where it gets kind of clever: the weight of the lamination, and the sheer bulk of four laminated cards, forms the basis for the "solid" portion of the lens cover. So instead of just putting in some solid material, the CoverLens folks thought to make that piece so much more useful by putting in these cards instead. So now, you’ll never be stuck in a circumstance where in order to pull a white balance you ask some production assistant in a white t-shirt to go stand in the light... or, worse yet, ask the actor to hold up the back of the script in front of their face so you can white-balance off it! (come on, you know you’ve done it...) But not anymore, because now you have a slick little white-balance card that you will ALWAYS HAVE WITH YOU because it’s built in as part of your lens cap. Or, if you’re using a camera with known backfocus issues or an interchangeable-lens camera that may need occasional backfocus adjustment, now you’ll always have a backfocus chart with you. Is it as good as a dedicated backfocus chart? Probably not, but in the field, the chart you have with you beats the one you don’t every single time. When I was running a one-man-band production company, the dread was getting to a set and realizing that you’d forgotten some trivial but important item; this little all-in-one videographer’s toolkit takes a little of that stress away.

What else do you always wish you had with you, but for some reason or other you never seem to? How about a lens cleaning cloth? Check – CoverLens includes a couple of microfiber lens cleaning cloths inside it. How about a pen? Check: it includes a pen, and a loop to keep the pen in (not that the pen’s anything special, but hey, the pen you have beats the one you don’t!) Lens cap, pen, lens cleaning cloth, white balance card, gray card, focus card, warm cards, cool card, plus/minus green cards, it’s all there.

It also has some eyelets on the front; we don't know what they're for but the printed instruction sheet (yes, it even includes a printed instruction sheet!) hints that those rings are designed to allow the use of future accessories. Seeing as how thoughtful the design is in this first iteration, I’m quite curious to see what kind of accessories these folks envision for us.

As far as construction goes, it seems very professional and solid. Great tough heavy-duty stitching, waterproof material, thick cords, solid Velcro. The drawstring uses tough thick shock cord, which should hold up well under rugged conditions (and can be stretched out to hang on the tripod pan handle so you don’t ever lose the CoverLens, too). It even has a white tab sewn into it that you can write your name on. This is a professional piece of gear. And it includes a 30-day no-questions-asked warranty, can't argue with that!

Are there downsides? Well, it’s a little bulky and poofy-looking, I guess, so you might have to explain yourself to your 1st AC, once... but as soon as you do, I guarantee the next question will be "where’d you get this?" The bigger danger in this lens cover won’t be from it getting lost, but more likely it getting stolen (which is where that name tab comes in handy!)

Seriously, this is one clever, useful piece of gear. The introductory price is tantalizingly low; I don’t expect that it’ll stay at $34.95 very long.