R-D1 & Hacked Industar-69

[Mr_Flibble]

Got this lens a week ago, and I finally got round to adjusting the focus for. I consulted the local lens guru Brian "Mad Gearhead" Sweeney and read through Hamish Gil's tutorial. I decided to go with Brian's method of cutting down the top of the focusing ring on the lens mount.

It took about an hour of trial and error with a Dremel tool. Around the third attempt I had filed down enough of the ring on the lens mount. So I cleaned everything up again, re-lubed the lens helical with some military grade rifle grease and assembled the whole thing.
Then I went for a walk, R-D1 dangling from my neck

A lonely tulip in my garden

Came across this oldtimer. I think I'll run take my jeep for a run today too, if I can get it started.

Broken fence

Bicycle path

Bayou

Dead trees


I found that setting the lens to f/8, focus at about 4 meters and leaving the camera on AE turns your R-D1 into a point-and-shoot camera.

Except for a little bit of vignetting the I-69 behaves pretty well.
The 28mm frame-lines of the R-D1 of course do not correspond with the lens and focus distance, which takes a little getting used to.

Regards,

 

[gekopaca]

I have one too, I modified it with the Hamish Gil's method.
Would you please share details about the Brian's method?
Could you post pictures?
How much thickness did you cut down?
Thanks for sharing.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

I wanted to take pictures of the work in progress, but that's kind of annoying when you need the same camera to test if the I-69 finally goes to infinity.

This is Brian's method from another post:

The Focus ring comes off with three set screws. There is a raised metal ring in the aluminum mount that stops the helical from going to far in. I filed off about 1/2 of the thickness of that ring so the helical would keep on going. Used a through-the-lens viewer to get infinity- then put the focus ring back on. The only trick is to space the ring out a little bit so that the focus range goes from infinity to near, and does not get caught on the stop-pins. I just backed the ring out a few millimeters and tightened the screws. We're looking at 30 minutes of filing and hacking here.

I used a dremel to file off about 1mm of the inner raised ring on the mount and the stop pins in this picture

I went for Brian's method, because it was easier to file this part with the dremel. I think if I had tried it on the helical, I would have damaged quite a bit of it.


p.s. Couldn't get the jeep to start

 

[Sonnar Brian]

It looks really good!

I did the I-69 for a Leica M8 user, and it covered the frame as well. It looks really good on the RD-1.

 

[gekopaca]

This is Brian's method from another post

Thanks for the quote!

Now I've mount the industar-69 on a LTM > M43 adaptor to make tests :

It's interesting too and the look is great.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Looks pretty sweet to me too. I guess an SLR would have made it easier to collimate the lens. Unfortunately I only have an LTM-to-M adapter, but no M-mount SLRs

I thought I didn't have a lenscap for it, but it turns out I had an old RICOH cap in my bits-box that seems to fit it quite well.

Took this one a couple of hours ago. Easter Dinner at my Sister's place. Slightly cropped.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

And finally got the jeep to start today,

Here it's parked at the momument at the Kapelsche Veer. It was the site of a fierce battle during the December 1944 and January 1945.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Some f/2.8 at 0.8m to 1.0m:

Bokeh galore Batman!