Junk to Macro Lens = Recycle of Kyocera Zoom Lens

You might be misunderstanding that I’m playing with cameras for the

sake of blogging. Far from it, behind the scene I’m disassembling

3 times more lenses or cameras.  I only showing them if I found a fun.

In most of the case, I’m doing it just looking for a spare parts or

particular component such as when I needed to get a mirror for an

ultra-low-angle photo-adapter.     —– I was disassembling a Yashica

compact Zoom camera, looking for a Motor and a Gear mechanism.

— Some old film cameras had auto-wind and rewind mechanism which

I could utilize in the other mechanical design.  So, from Yashica, I got

two motors with each gear mechanism, and not only that, I found an

extending Zoom lens barrel seems to be very useful. 

I had used a same kind of barrel to make a focusing helicoid.

This Kyocera-Yashica 38~115 mm zoom lens seem to have a quite 

fancy design.  Front group convex lens has a Canon like Arc-formed

motor for focusing and having aspherical lens, and rear group is pure

diverging concave lens.   And I found the front group lens works well

as a macro lens (used in reverse) = So, mount the lens into the

extending lens barrel = Here I have a x1~x3 (about) macro lens.

This front group lens had a Shutter-aperture-combined blade which

I removed therefore there is no F-Aperture = always fully open !

—– still, this sample photos showed rather good quality and giving

beautiful out of focus bokeh.

But with further test, lens showed strong curvature of the image =

image is not flat = good for 3D subject but not good for a flat object.

(When lens was designed, the aberrations, inherent to any single lens

were corrected by the combination of the other lens.  Yet, in this case, 

such strong curvature of the image needed to be corrected by the 

strong diverging lens of the rear group.  But, as only front group lens 

was used here, the uncorrected aberration became too apparent.

—– Photo above Left showed x3 image.  Its coloring was caused by the

Chromatic aberration.  Photo Middle (x1 size), the best focus was made

to peripheral.  And the Right, best focus was made to center.   The focus

to the center is 4mm different ! = If the subject was 4mm deep shallow

dish, this lens will make a good focus from center to the corner.)

I need to find a good subject. = Ideally, Halloween Costumed insect.   🙂

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