Delicate lens "surgery"
This scary-looking lens "operation" yielded a powerful and wonderfully sharp add-on lens for reverse mounting on my Nikon AI-S 105mm lens by using a macro-reverse adapter ring. Someone gave my a totally dead Olympus IS-3 DLX film camera knowing I would probably scavenge the lens for one of my projects. It's the front end of a 35-180mm ED non-interchangeable lens that was removed from the camera body after an hour of tedious disassembly. At the beginning of the process I was very careful, making sure to save all small screws and cause no damage. After hitting one "road block" after another, I decided to finish the removal with a hammer and vice-grips.
In this photo I have the lens mounted securely to a cheap miter box to allow cutting without the lens moving about. The hose clamp serves as an alignment guide to give a cut that's parallel with the front of the lens barrel. The intent here is to remove the front lens group cell (containing 2 elements) and be able to reverse mount the unit onto the front of another lens using a double male macro reverse adapter. Careful measurements were taken to ensure that the saw blade cleared the lens and left enough barrel length to serve as a lens shade. The cut edge was given a "machined" finish by fine filing to remove burrs and careful sanding with various grits of emery paper to give a flat edge with a very slight bevel. All done, the element looks like an off the shelf store-bought item. Only the information around the lens gives away its pedigree.
20110814-MA-050
Delicate lens "surgery"
This scary-looking lens "operation" yielded a powerful and wonderfully sharp add-on lens for reverse mounting on my Nikon AI-S 105mm lens by using a macro-reverse adapter ring. Someone gave my a totally dead Olympus IS-3 DLX film camera knowing I would probably scavenge the lens for one of my projects. It's the front end of a 35-180mm ED non-interchangeable lens that was removed from the camera body after an hour of tedious disassembly. At the beginning of the process I was very careful, making sure to save all small screws and cause no damage. After hitting one "road block" after another, I decided to finish the removal with a hammer and vice-grips.
In this photo I have the lens mounted securely to a cheap miter box to allow cutting without the lens moving about. The hose clamp serves as an alignment guide to give a cut that's parallel with the front of the lens barrel. The intent here is to remove the front lens group cell (containing 2 elements) and be able to reverse mount the unit onto the front of another lens using a double male macro reverse adapter. Careful measurements were taken to ensure that the saw blade cleared the lens and left enough barrel length to serve as a lens shade. The cut edge was given a "machined" finish by fine filing to remove burrs and careful sanding with various grits of emery paper to give a flat edge with a very slight bevel. All done, the element looks like an off the shelf store-bought item. Only the information around the lens gives away its pedigree.
20110814-MA-050