lgstoian
Member
Hello folks.
So a few weeks ago the shutter on my Elikon 535 (soviet era camera made by BeLomo) stopped working. Opened the little sucker up to fix it but thanks high quality soviet era engineering and built quality that turned out to be somewhat impossible.
Didn't want to completely scrap the little guy as I was quite fond of the way it rendered images. The Minar/Minitar-2 35mm f/3.8 lens is a direct descendant of the Minitar-1 32mm f/2.8 lens found on the LC-A one of the most iconic cameras of the Lomography movement , so it would of been a shame to never use it again.
I decided to adapt the optics from the Elikon 535 for use on my Micro 4/3 cameras.
First thing that I had to do was to measure what will be the future flange distance of the lens.
I tore down the camera completely and removed the lens. Had to completely disassemble the optics and clean each of the 4 elements as time and poor seals haven't been kind on it.
Created a 3D design in Sketchup and with the help of my 3D printer and an old C-mount to Micro 4/3 adapter I created a simple manual focus , fixed aperture lens. I thought the cog design will honor it's heritage 🙂.
Biggest issues were getting the flange distance just right so the lens can focus from close up to infinity and making sure it is going to be centered over the sensor.
This is how the lens came out.
And here is an album with the first pictures I took with it.
So a few weeks ago the shutter on my Elikon 535 (soviet era camera made by BeLomo) stopped working. Opened the little sucker up to fix it but thanks high quality soviet era engineering and built quality that turned out to be somewhat impossible.
Didn't want to completely scrap the little guy as I was quite fond of the way it rendered images. The Minar/Minitar-2 35mm f/3.8 lens is a direct descendant of the Minitar-1 32mm f/2.8 lens found on the LC-A one of the most iconic cameras of the Lomography movement , so it would of been a shame to never use it again.
I decided to adapt the optics from the Elikon 535 for use on my Micro 4/3 cameras.
First thing that I had to do was to measure what will be the future flange distance of the lens.
I tore down the camera completely and removed the lens. Had to completely disassemble the optics and clean each of the 4 elements as time and poor seals haven't been kind on it.
Created a 3D design in Sketchup and with the help of my 3D printer and an old C-mount to Micro 4/3 adapter I created a simple manual focus , fixed aperture lens. I thought the cog design will honor it's heritage 🙂.
Biggest issues were getting the flange distance just right so the lens can focus from close up to infinity and making sure it is going to be centered over the sensor.
This is how the lens came out.
And here is an album with the first pictures I took with it.
