Flip-up lens caps?

[JBrew]

My fairly decent (at the time) Canon S2iS died a few years ago and I've been suffering with an iPhone. I'm finally at a point in life (kids out of college!!!) that I could justify a new camera. After a lot of research I recently bought a new X-T30 and I love it! I plan on destroying it on my backcountry and motorcycle adventures but I don't want to destroy it any faster than absolutely necessary. I'm working through some alternatives for carrying but one of my biggest concerns is always lens protection. Especially since I can move the lens to a new camera when this one stops working.

Lens caps are a pain with gloves and one hand, which is often the case doing the things I do to get the shots I want. Some kind of lens cap that opens yet stays fixed would be great. Flip up would be nice but a diaphragm would be even better. I did a search and found surprisingly little out there and nothing for the 39mm threads on the 27mm lens I'll carry most of the time. (The form factor of the 27mm makes the camera incredibly small and portable and you can only take the shots if you have the camera.) Does anyone know of, what seems to me, would be an obvious and readily available solution? And I'm really not looking for a lens cap held on by a string. That's still a two-handed solution. If there's really nothing available I'll make one from a threaded ring and a scope cap, but I'd prefer one that was ready made.

Thanks!

[George_P]

I’d say just put a filter on. Sky or polariser. 

[JBrew]

1 hour ago, George_P said:

I’d say just put a filter on. Sky or polariser. 

Yeah, would do that either way, but going in and out of a bag will wind up smudging the filter pretty quickly if not covered by a lens cap. Just interesting that such an obvious solution seems to have no product. Then again, I'm an engineer and will always be looking for improvements and whether they are traditional or not makes no difference to me.

[George_P]

27 minutes ago, JBrew said:

Yeah, would do that either way, but going in and out of a bag will wind up smudging the filter pretty quickly if not covered by a lens cap. Just interesting that such an obvious solution seems to have no product. Then again, I'm an engineer and will always be looking for improvements and whether they are traditional or not makes no difference to me.

Well, make a drawing. I have a cnc router. 🙂  But seriously, I keep the camera in the bag with the filter and the lens hood on, with only a wrist strap on it. I take it out to take the picture(s) and put it back in. The hood prevents the bag touching the filter. And I have a blower and a cleaning cloth to wipe the filter if need be. I have different size bags that I use depending on the camera/lens etc.