Helicoid Lens (A)

While hibernating in the winter (because, I can’t go ski kind, let alone climbing the mountain, = still have to do something — I made yet another homemade Lenses. (this time using a focusing helicoid sold in the net.)

In the political stance, I should re-use other old camera’s lens barrel kind though, they may not come when I want.  So, I bought some focusing helicoids from China such as 12~17mm, 17~35mm, 36~90mm, mostly M42 fitting.  (M42 rear mount / Pentax screw mount can be easily converted to Nikon, Canon, Sony-E with a simple (and cheap) adapter.)

And the lens I used was came from broken Sony zoom lens. (In the center of the photo above, two of the small lenses)

So, the game starts = how to fix a small irregular shaped lens to the helicoid.   In here, cut a card-board paper to the shape (Photo left) and mount into an empty filter ring (Photo middle) — and 52mm filter ring was mounted to the helicoid. (Photo right) = to test and check if the infinity focus can be made. —– (this approach failed)

And in here, another lens was temporally mounted on a helicoid with soft plastic patty (Photo left) —– Photo middle showed the lens on the previous photo was screw mounted to an aluminium ring which was epoxy fixed on to the 52mm filter ring, and to the helicoid, then to the camera body. (Photo middle and right) —– (For clarity sake, those photos were taken before the mat-black paint was applied

This lens, with about 65mm focal length has an Iris ! —– though, the image made by this lens was too bad (except pretty good center) and the effect of the Iris was not much help.  😀

So, they are the images. (Looks hopeless coma aberration)

My attempt to make homemade lens has been having funny paradox, while making the lens DIY, the image quality was just fuzzy and poor, —– yet still, I’ve been trying to make it somewhat usable. —– ? ? ?    Then the “Enlightenment” came which was “Why not”  It IS the nature of the lens = bad lens makes bad image.  What’s wrong ?  The top photo here was made by this, Helicoid Lens (A) —– I think, this bad image was not too bad.  I like this painterly effect.  Don’t you agree ?  (It seems, the Japanese Zennists are visiting here.   So, those “Play with lenses” are also the demonstration of the “Mind game in Zen”=  “liberate yourself from a stucked mind” “Why not”    Ha ha ha.   😀 )

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