Saturday, June 20, 2009

Playin' with cameras and lenses

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had collected a some lenses from the US and was playing with them.
After reviewing other conversion attempts on the web, I made a few decisions. The connection had to be all metal and strong - no epoxying plastic lens caps together to make the adapters.It did not have to be permanent but on the other hand, I am pretty sure no one is going to make a FD or M42 lend mount digital camera (would be nice to be proved wrong though!). I would need auto focus confirmation on each lens - my eyesight is not what it used to be. And finally, it had to be wholly achieveable with the few tools I have.
And I believe that I have succeeded on each one of those.
One of the most difficult things to do was to figure out how far from the camera focal plane the lens had to be. We are not talking about ultra precise measurements, just within a 0.5mm or so.
The first thing was to construct a device that would hold the lens perpendicular to the camera and allow the camera to be adjusted back and forth to find the optimum separation distance. The images below show my quick setup and how it works. The device is crudely made from a few strips of wood and a macro focus attachment.
The second and third pictures show how it moves the camera back and forth. A simple ruler can measure the difference needed.

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