Will GoldstoneUnity Dev. Tutor. Musicist. Designer.

Last time on DIY Fisheye, I experimented with removing the lens from the Lomo Fisheye (original) camera, and showed you how to remove it without having to saw or do too much work in general!

This time around I begin the refinement process, and remove more of the back of the lens, allowing a larger view through the lens for your SLR. Having completed part I of this blog thread, I consulted members of photo.net forums on what my next step might be, and got very helpful reply from David Nance, who had done a similar thing to what I was doing before, except he was working towards getting a fisheye to mount on his Sony compact. To see his results, take a look at the forum thread, there you’ll find a link to his photos – this is where I realised i’d have to make the back hole in the lens much bigger to allow the SLR lens I plan to mount this to, to focus through the optics of the Fisheye.

So, following on from the steps carried out in Part I, heres what to do next!

1) We need to cut away a few MM of the outer rim from the back of the lens, but before we do that, lets remove the optics from inside the lens, simply twist the front rim to remove it, then, gently push the back optics and all three parts, plus a plastic cylindrical support will pop out, do this carefully so as not to scratch the lenses! You should now have the parts shown below (front rim, optics piled, shell of lens) -

2) Now lets cut a few MM away from the back edge of the outer shell, take a hacksaw to it and remove a few MM until the outer rim is flush with the inner circular column -

3) Now, using a craft or stanley knife, cut down the support struts that join the outer shell and inner column. and using a file, file down the top piece of plastic at the back, I clamped the file in a vice and ran the shell over it to ensure its as flat as possible.

4) Now cut away the inside until you are leaving only the lip inside that the bottom optic sits upon. It should look like this -

5) Now lets put the optics back in! Place them back in the order you expect, with the small optic at the bottom, then the plastic cylinder, then the medium sized optic – crucially with its deepest concave side facing the front of the lens (this seems to eccentuate the fisheye effect), and finally the large optic with the flat side facing forward, and refit the front rim, twisting to lock it in.

Above : the parts of the lens

Above : the lens put back together, now with a much larger view through the lens.

6) Next comes a part you needn’t do! We did some preliminary testing, to find out how well our amputated lens would work on the front of an SLR lens. We mounted the lens inside a coffee cup as seen below, and you’ll see our results so far.

In our next part of DIY Fisheye, we’ll mount the lens onto a Lens cap, so it can sit as close as possible to the lens, allowing for the best depth of field and focus. Massive thanks so far to Nick Jones and Ed Sedgley for their continuing help in this lens based adventure!

Tags: amputate, file, fisheye, lens, lens cap, lenses, lomo, mount, saw, wide angle

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Design, General. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.