Follow the Flow — Karma / Dharma

Those who, the kind regular reader of this blog might have noticed that the past

5~6 months or so, I seemed to become an intoxicated junky of junk cameras.

What happened on me ? = Give a thought or two, in terms of the flow in the life.

(= Follow the flow mean, not chase it, not cringing the mater or notion, let alone

obsessed.  It would just happen = so, just follow.)

I gave a glance to those cameras —– then, I found the serial number of the camera

I first disassembled, (which was given by my friend) was like this.

Oh my goodness, 8150 again ? !!! —– This sign appeared wherever I go, but

crucially, it will be sign-posted to the matter or thing which got “the concern”.

= May be concerned to the Dharma, and to my Karma hence I have to take the

matter serious. — to show some more hard facts, if you think it sound dubious.

Photo above left was Canon EF Macro 100mm F2.8 = the most useful lens to me.

And the Photo middle was the most frequently used Canon Fisheye Zoom 8~15mm.

Which got the number 2***1850*.   And the right, Zeiss 18mm for Nikon.

They are the numbers happened to appear onto my camera lenses.

They were in the shop purely by chance = as if they were placed there for

me to pick-up, though,in most of the case I bought it even without seeing

the number. —– Without any explanation of why it’s there = is the

natural flow of the fate or given task or opportunity to pick-up, whichever

the way we interpret.

—– as it comes.    So, I pick up and do what I can do, regardless whether it is

worthwhile or profitable, or please others — or NOT. (in a hindsight, at least

I can say “I did a lot” to respond what the moment required to me.)

I think, what comes is in fact, what was given —– for each of us to fulfil what we

were born to do. = It’s mean, my Karma think, that me to play with junk camera

suits me !   Or the Karma even like my way to play with the junk.  😀

—– And may be my Karma noticed that I’m not sensitive enough to see the

hidden sign, they started to put a noisy notice shouting 8150 to make me aware

that we are a part of the Dharma and they are watching us.

___/\___

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Remote Cable — Life in Natural Flow

My way of navigating the life is, just follow the flow.  Don’t push.

—– some of the people who knows me might feel not necessary true,

as I put enormous effort to do something some time. = though, it was

not a push for me = it was just a normal condition in its situation.  

Like, to be born in India, these days they got 45, 50 degree C hot weather

= just to survive needs to have enormous endurance, though,

that what their country is.  

This year’s Ramadan in muslim calendar is coinciding with a midsummer

= therefore, the muslim emigrated to the northern Norway couldn’t eat as

there is no sunset. (in reality, they said to have invented an excuse.  🙂 )    

Thanks goodness, I’m neither a Norwegian nor muslim I don’t need to

have a problem.   Avoiding to have problem is, “don’t do it”.

So, as a holy man, I don’t do gamble, take no drug (in fact any medicine),

no alcohol, no smoking, no woman = Where the cause of a trouble could ever

come !   It’s a well known wisdom, “Do nothing cause no mistake or failure”

= “Barren land makes no weed” — but neither has a wheat or barley even

buckwheat. —– Do nothing mean, just wasting time ?  Neither.  

Strangely, do something is coming in its course.  It just happens as a flow.

Such as being asked to help or advising something.  Otherwise, just do it.

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—– Give a thought or two.  So far, what I made after I’ve started this Blog,

were the result of a fleak idea triggered by the funny material I encountered.

(Before those, the old creation were often made to solve the practical needs

such as the flash system.)      So that, the work for “Junk Lens etc” were all

happened with a sheer coincidence. = I mean, I didn’t push it happens

neither I didn’t look for the material etc = it was already there, and I only did

a small finishing part of it for a joke or fun. So, when I went to a camera shop to get a new air blower, I found a

Canon’s Remote Trigger Cable, or its converting cable, in their

odds and ends box. = It might be a connecting cable to use old type

cable to 5D etc.  — anyhow, it might be an obsolete type, and the

price was only few pounds. (Photo above left = here the cable showes

“after the switch was fitted”).    

If it was a cable to go to 5D, why not make it for a short trigger cable ?

= It’s a matter of just put a double switch. —– And conveniently, I have

a disassembled Olympus compact camera. = I could use their switch and

the button for this purpose. (Photo above middle)    

—– Since those small accessories are the company’s  cash-cow, (you 

could buy a cheap kit lens with a price of 2~3 cables) Canon changed it 

many times to the users to buy new cable every time they got new model.

(Photo right = Remote terminal for old (film) EOS)

Anyway, I took the Olympus’ switch and the button and connected it to the

Canon’s cable = Voila’ Remote Trigger Cable for Canon DSLR. (Photo Left)

—– As I said, I didn’t look for what to do.  It was there.  

This was what I call, a natural flow.

(This natural flow is the way how the Karma leading us = and as I follow,

there is no problem or ill health.)

____/\____

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Still, Flower Patch — with Gaudy Lens + LED Ring Light

When I walked through a side of that flower patch in the evening, I found

there still quite a few flowers.   As it was already the dusk, I decided to go

there again with my camera and the LED Ring Light on Gaudy Lens.   🙂

I’m not convinced that this

combination suites for the subject.

(some shots were done while the

LED Ring Light was not fixed on

the lens-front but held separately,

aiming from above.) — This Ring 

Light was the same one I’ve made  

for the 100mm F2.8 Macro Lens,

and powered by 3 x 2500mAH-AA

battery (through a 5.6 ohm register) = it can work more than 120 min’ continuously !

= Not too bad !

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Zeiss and Zeiss — (Last shot on the Flower Patch)

It’s still a day before Summer Solstice though, the flower patch

I’ve been photographing was coming to the end.  So, seemingly this

was the last shot there and for this occasion, I used the recycled 

£1 Zeiss Talon lens and the genuine Carl Zeiss Planar 85mm F1.4 

T* lens on Canon 5D Mk-III for a comparison.

On the photos above, left was shot by Talon lens and the right was

by the Planar F1.4 lens.  Since Talon lens was F2.8, the F1.4 lens 

 at F1.4 showed much shallower depth of field.

And here, the left photo was taken by Talon lens and the right photo 

was by the Planar F1.4 lens, but as the modified Talon lens got quite 

long focusing helicoid (it was not a screw helicoid but a rotating cam) 

which allows the 1/3 close-up, against this, 85mm F1.4 lens can close 

only to 1m (1/12), hence the photo right was a heavily cropped image. 

—– still, they showed amazingly similar characteristics, such as

the type of Bokeh.

And the rest of the photos here were from the £1 Recycled Lens = “Zeiss Talon Lens”

In fact, I was rather impressed by this quality performance !

As this lens was designed for a projector lens, (= never used for infinity) 

it was pretty good in close-up work !  (Ordinary lens was designed to work 

best in the infinity and the macro lens was designed to be best in the x10

magnification.) — Then give a thought, if a lens of 2 or 3 lenses structure 

could give such good performance, why we DO need to have an elaborated,

heavy, expensive lens.  (Mind you, all those photos were taken at fully open

F2.8 = anyhow no Iris there.)  😀    

But, this last photo was by the Planar F1.4 lens at F1.4 (all photos’  

aperture were fully open). —– Recycled 50 years old lens costed me   

£1 and the 85mm F1.4 lens was £600 even for a secondhand.

= May be we should start to think about what we really need from

a camera lens.  Like a so-called HD sound (called Hi-Resi in Japan)

do we need such a high resolution —– Does it make any difference

on our life ? — Wasn’t that mere illusion created by the company and

a ploy to sell yet another new model to us ?

What the photo image meant to us ? — DO we ever watched the world

in 10MP details, let alone to remember in such a detail ? ? ?    😀

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Modifying the Zeiss Lens

The story started when I found the same Olympus camera in a junk shop, 

of which I’ve used its lens barrel to make the “Gaudy Lens”.

Since I’ve disassembled this camera and already know the structure, in this

time I unscrewed only few crucial screws and took out just the lens barrel.

(so far, this lens barrel is the most useful component I found and I was

going to use it to modify the £1 Zeiss lens .) —– This Carl Zeiss projection

Lens was mere £1, still having Zeiss quality and the distinctive character

though, as it was a projection lens, there was no focusing helicoid or

Iris kind to use it for taking a photo. = It’s shame to be wasted as a junk

despite it got fine optics. (And the reason why I bought it was, of course,

I was going to use it for taking photos. — I’ve tested it on the homemade

bellows but, it is better to have a convenient focusing helicoid.)

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To mount the Zeiss lens onto the Olympus barrel, the pipe of the

Zeiss Lens has to be narrowed down. (Photo above middle and the right) =

(It’s a simple work to file down the plastic pipe = simple but laborious.  🙂

—– it is a kind of the work, a Buddhist is quite good at ! —– remember

an old say  “Dripping water can curve a rock” )

 = Anyhow, on the end, the Zeiss

 lens was fitted in the Olympus barrel

 and they were screwed onto a Canon

 mount adapter. = And now, the Zeiss

Talon Lens is working on a Canon DSLR

while giving the focus from infinity to 1/3 close-up !

—– The photo here right, showed a remarkable similarity of the

softness of the other Zeiss Lens !

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Reconstruct the Lens

A while ago, I made a so-called Gaudy Lens using old Olympus Film camera’s

lens barrel.   The Lens I’ve taken out from the camera was, usable optics — still

it was disassembled state.    In honest feering, I’m not keen to the lens itself —

38~80mm F5.6 “super” zoom is not impressive at all though, I just wanted to

reconstruct the lens for a kind of a game.  🙂  —– Putting back the gears etc to

reconstruct the focus control etc — though, since the lens was no longer in the

main barrel, there was no structure to hold the optics in the position = I needed

to improvise some structure to fix the lens position.

As seen on the photo above left, optics was tested while stucked by a plastic patte.

And an aluminium plate was made to fix to the rear element and the plate was

screwed to the front unit, then the exact distance was adjusted. (photo above right)

—– by the lens design, the zooming was made by the position of the rear element

— but now, the lens was mounted on the DSLR body, and no zooming mechanism,

the lens works as a 60mm F5.6  only.  —– The game done.  🙂

(You must be amazed how the camera lens can be handled in such a casual manner.

= Yes, they were made by just another human. = It’s not a rocket science.   😀 )

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Gaudy Lens — with one F-stop “less gaudy” Image

Gaudy lens was intended to fill the gap between “Double-Density Pinhole”

and the “Two Element homemade Lens” with added convenience of the

easy focus.  In a quality of the image, DD Pinhole has no details of the subject

= totally paintary image.    And an omnifocus Two Element Lens has certain

softness, still not so strong. —– I wanted to have somewhere between.

 Though, the original Gaudy Lens 

 showed too strong halation = so that,

 I made it a bit less by reducing its

 effective aperture for one stop.

 = 33mm x 0.7 = 23mm (equivalent 

of F1.8 down to F2.5) 

(It was done by placing a black paper with 23mm hole, back of the lens.)

So, they are the answer. = fuzzy enough but not too much.  🙂

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Gaudy Lens, gaudy images

They are the pictures of the first field test of a homemade lens I described

on the previous post, the Gaudy Lens.

The lens is a single meniscus magnifier lens with no coating, hence a lots of

aberration, halation was unavoidable —– in fact that was what I wanted

and the very purpose to make this lens.

Same as a bright light, the strong bright color causes strong halation too.

— even worse, the fuzzy image needed to have a bit more contrast =

increased highlight = brighter color spread more. It’s an orgie of the color.

Thank you very much to see all through the photos.  In the next post, I’ll put

a bit more moderate version of the same flowers.

(With a trick of a piece of small paper.)  🙂

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How about a Glittering Gaudy Lens ?

Do you know, this is called “Kawaii” in the Japanese norm today.

Settle with flowers to create Kawaii image was rather casual approach though,

otherwise — kitten’s picture if not small child or young girl.

— But these days, to deal with child or young girl, the risque is too high.

So, I would rather choose a camera. —– best of all, it’s cost virtually nothing.

Here, it was a 30 years old Olympus film camera.    The camera of that

age is much easier to disassemble and to utilize its mechanism.

 The camera then had auto-winding-up, rewind (Photo above left = the 

train of gears on the bottom of the body convey the power of the motor in

the winding-up spool to the rewinding fork), auto-focus, collapsible lens

etc, very useful mechanism though, “fully auto” then did not necessary 

had everything. = The exposure control was done by one mechanism = 

= two L-shaped blades worked as a Shutter and an Iris same time.

(Photo above, right)   Under the bright light, the blades open very little  

and close quick = worked as high speed shutter with small F-aperture.

And when it was dark, blades will fully open and close after a while, 

so in any condition, it gave a combination of somewhere between.

(Though, such mechanism is not useful anywhere else.)

What I found useful was their zoom lens barrel.  I removed all the lens

and the mechanism then I put a single meniscus lens. (So that the zoom

barrel became a focusing helicoid for the lens which can give the focus

from infinity to 1/2 close up.)  This lens has about 60mm focal length

and the diameter of 35mm = effectively F1.8.

The lens had no coating and such single lens has a lots of aberrations and

the halation of which I’m after and this lens got glittering gold encoder.

— isn’t it gorgeous or bad taste ?  😀       ( I didn’t put — it was there.)

Incidentally, this lens showed this character (and see the difference)

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Fancy a Fancy Lens ?

Among my weird looks (often its function too) lenses this is the most fancy one.  

It was made out of the front element of a cheap fish-eye converter and 

the focusing element of the discarded Canon G9 compact camera.

(As the focusing lens had stepping motor built-in, I thought I could make

“Focus Shift” unit though, it didn’t work with strong front concave lens)

So, this fancy lens does just ordinary job = able to take mediocre photo.  😀

Just like as a 60th Instamatic Camera, (though on a rather expensive setting)

the lens works just as a camera lens and produce “so so” kind of the images.

— still, considering it has only two lenses = front concave lens and the lear

convex lens and no focus at all,  it wasn’t too bad.

—–> with a kind of routine test here, this lens showed this character :

Since this wasn’t an omnifocus type of the lens, I needed to give a focus for close shot.

(Lens wasn’t fully inserted into the camera = about 2mm lifted-up from the mount)

= with the best focus, its image was surprisingly good ! (Photo left and the center)

But, when lens was fully mounted, the image was hopeless. (Photo right)

—– I’m not sure whether this lens ever become my fancy  🙂

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