IT LIVES! (OR THE UNGENTLE ART OF FRANKENLENSING)

 As a boy, I always enjoyed making things, or finding new uses for discarded junk. Magnets and magnifying glasses fascinated me and still do to a certain degree. Perhaps this is why after I rediscovered photography as a hobby, I was determined to see what I could do with my camera.

Probably one of the first customisations I applied and certainly the most useful, was a viewfinder. As my camera only has a small viewscreen on the back and not a through lens view, it meant I had to hold the camera away from my face when using it and keep my spectacles on, in order to see the display. As I am short sighted, this necessitated flipping my glasses up and down between shots. So, I found an old slide viewer at a car boot sale and fastened it on with a plate of Meccano, and a screw knob or the plate of a tripod.

The viewer was similar to another boxed version that I found later, complete with slides. Its interesting to see the dedication on the box, as it was a gift from the British Society of Leningrad, in 1964!

Now that I had the means to use the camera more efficiently and accurately, the live view and digital magnification preview could be seen much more accurately, allowing for pinpoint manual focus.

Next up, I had been following a french photographer, called Mathieu Stern, who was championing the use of old lenses and techniques, with digital cameras. One of his articles dealt with creating a lens from parts found in a bin at a street sale - 'The Crapinon'

https://www.mathieustern.com/the-crapinon

Inspired by the video, I thought I would give it a try with some of the odd lenses I had picked up along the way.

Magic Lantern Objective Lens

First up was an old front lens from a magic lantern projector, which after some fiddling about with various pipes and extension tubes, I found would be ideal as an objective lens. The problem was focus, as mounting it on a tube meant that it was fixed. A quick search on Amazon procured a screw fit focussing helicoid like M. Stern often used.  This opened up a world of opportunity with other lenses too.

Aldus Projector Lens

Next up was an Aldus lens from a late fifties slide projector, which, with a little rubber insulation and some gorilla tape, sat snugly in the helicoid. Both this and the previous lens were quite sharp in the centre, but with some strange swirly aberrations around the edge of the frame.

I bought a second, shallower helicoid for shorter focal length lenses too. When some old projectors were decommissioned at work, I cannibalised the main optics and used them as the basis of another arrangement, using a heavy metal aperture I found on ebay.

Industrial Aperture and Projector Lens

Original Brass Lens found with Aperture

The aperture also came with a large brass mounted lens, which although it wouldn't focus anywhere near infinity, was capable of extreme macro.

Sometimes, older lenses have a really short focal length and if I need to use it with my camera, an alternative mount is needed. When I found a small victorian brass lens, with a variable aperture on an external wheel, I had to mount it as close to the sensor as possible, as the 'flange distance' was very small. So a Samsung NX mount came in handy, along with a rubber gasket from an old washing machine to hold the lens the required distance and allow a 'tilt-shift' operation and a rudimentary focus. Despite the Canadian balsam used to glue the lens elements together, deteriorating with age and leaving a deep amber cast to the glass, the little lens produced quite a clear image.

Note aperture wheel at left behind front lens

Unprocessed RAW image

Additional : The term 'frankenlensing' refers to cobbling together various parts to make a new, functioning lens and can also be applied to temporary attachment of an element - such as manually holding a part in place, for the duration of a shot. I prefer the more permanent side, creating attachments which can be used over again, or on a modular basis.