Lens hacking. Has this been done ?

[Peter_Jones]

Just wondering - I know that with patience, understanding and access to lathes etc. almost anything within reason can be made to work, but....

Has anyone fitted an Olympus trip lens into, for example, an industar61 l39 mount ?

I am eyeing the two at the moment, but the industar is too good to meddle with. I may well try it out though, need more scrappers.


There must be many fixed-lens optics that would be nice to use, i can see the aperture mechanism being problematic.

 

[rogue_designer]

I know Avoitus hacked the lens from a GSN to use on his Canon dSLRs.

I think he did the lens from the Argus C3 too.

 

[Kim Coxon]

You are more than likely to run into problems with the focus mech as well. The industar helix is designed for a ~52mm lens whereas the trip lens is 40mm. The RF cam would be well out as I suspect any distance scale. You might be better off using just a mount and try to use the helix from the trip.

Kim

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The Olympus Trip is a Half-Frame camera- so you would have issues out at the edges.

You would have to make an uncoupled lens out of it, and do your own focus scale.

If you want to match the focal length of the optics to the focus mount, which is why my Single-Element lens worked in the I-61 mount, the optic was a 50mm FLocal Length

 

[Peter_Jones]

Thanks, Kim and Brian,

I hadn't considered that the focussing would differ due to focal length - that would've kept me scratching my head for a while 🙄


Rogue_designer, that sounds like a very difficult project.

 

[Kim Coxon]

The trips I have are full frame. Surely it was the Pen series that was half frame?

Kim

PS If you want to play, I still have a parts trip and another you are welcome to. I also have a couple of "spares" J8's.

Kim

The Olympus Trip is a Half-Frame camera- so you would have issues out at the edges.

You would have to make an uncoupled lens out of it, and do your own focus scale.

If you want to match the focal length of the optics to the focus mount, which is why my Single-Element lens worked in the I-61 mount, the optic was a 50mm FLocal Length

 

[Peter_Jones]

My Trip is full-frame. I'll pull it apart and see if I can figure anything out.

 

[MartinP]

Sad but true, I have both a Pen, which I used as my all-the-time camera and a (slightly damaged) Trip which I obtained due to curiosity. They do look similar in general layout, but the Trip is full-frame and the Pen is 1/2-frame. There is a slight difference in size, but of course the film is basically the main thing inside the camera, so they are less different than you might think.

Edit, and I have just recalled that the Pen EE, which I have, is actually fixed focus. The lens is 28mm and the usual trapped-needle exposure control works on the aperture but the focussing helical is completely absent. Nevertheless, it worked ok for many years as a snapshot camera - which is what it was designed as I suppose.

How about going from the other direction, and fitting a manual aperture in to the Trip body ?

 

[FrankS]

Lens hacking IMO, is much more easily done using an slr camera where one can see the effects of focusing directly due to the slr design.

 

[projectbluebird]

I remember reading somewhere the actual travel on the various RF's. If you're handy with machine tools, you can make an RF cam for any focal length. Of course, you'll need a fair bit of math and a few tricky machine setups, But it can be done.

Search on ebay for "elcan." Gokevincameras has a few lenses that have been converted to SM, with RF coupling. I swear one of them used an elmar helical.

Sounds like fun!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

> Lens hacking IMO, is much more easily done using an slr camera where one
> can see the effects of focusing directly due to the slr design.

The problem is clearing the mirror on an SLR, and that the SLR lenses are much more complex with automatic aperture mechanisms. Getting the lens ONTO an RF camera is easy- getting it to couple is hard. You can always make your own scale-focus.

Last night I mounted a 1946 Kodak Astigmat Special 50mm f3.5 in shutter onto the collapsible mount left over from the Sonnar. I'm collapsible the tube to collimate the focus, then fix the tube into place. It will RF couple as it uses the internal mount.

Sorry about the half-frame mixup.

Nikon RF with a Kodak Lens, what will they think of next.

 

[harry01562]

Lens hacking isn't anything new, of course. Marc James Small, in his book on Non-Leitz LTM lenses has pics of a CZ Tessar 105/4.5 pre-war lens that was hacked into a Pam-Britar mount. Aside from the information on the company name and the fact that their only other product appears to be a VF for the lens(which appears in the addenda to the book), has anyone information to add about the lens?
It was supposedly made after the war as a long lens for the civilian Kardon, but there doesn't seem to be any proof of the statement.
I own one of the original lenses, and would welcome more information.

Harry