Hood is very very useful and effective on tele lenses. You can skip hood for wide angle lenses but try to use one with tele lenses. When there is sun outside, just play with your tele lenses, anytime there is bright sun outside your frame, the contrast will drop significantly. When you put a hood on, you get back a lot of the contrast. However if you compose a shot with bright sun in your frame, hood doesn't do anything. One of the advantage of m43 is that not only the lens is smaller, but the hood is also smaller. 

I had 75-300 II last time, bought a 3rd party hood ( JJC ), very useful to block sunlight from side.

[attachmentid=8477838]

43lens with m43 body.

Hahaha ya, I dont have filter on the rest of lens except 12-40 pro ( hood too small cant act as protection ).
Focal are far than what I need ( except when moon are big and pretty and I wish I had that 300mm x 2 focal    ) so I sold and aim 40-150 pro better IQ and suitable focal. Now with MC14 I got from Japan, it's complete 

Panasonic Headquarter located at Petaling Jaya

many years ago i saw discussion here saying that they have no technician to service lens, they outsource or send back to japan iianm.