Anton's photo blog

I created a cost effective adapter, to fit Bronica ETR lenses onto Sony E Mount cameras . Price is based on Shapeways' material/production costs. I tried to make it an efficient design, using least amount of material without it losing structural integrity. On photos below is shown my first 3D printed prototype. Adapter can be ordered here If you already own Zenza Bronica lens, you know what to expect from it in terms of image quality. I own a Zenzanon 75mm lens. I personally like its subjects rendition. It has a unique softness and mood to its images. I'd use it with wide open aperture to create soft flattering portraits, or to photograph flowers. For instance, I can't get a pleasingly soft shot like this with any other lens I have. This shot was made with flexible adapter(extended to macro) from one of my previous posts. With rigid adapter that I offer here , you'll get more of a typical photo results, with a little bit of character(illustrated

To make this adapter, I made hole in lens cap, glued in black tube( which is a rolled up black cardboard) and inserted lens from Minolta Hi-Matic AF2-M. For focusing, I move lens along the tube, in and out. If I need smaller aperture, I just cut it out from black paper and tape it on top of lens. This setup is very light and compact, and allows full manual control, which is important to me. And I love visual quality that Minolta lens produces. Here is a short video, that we shot with this setup.  https://youtu.be/mnGJt_bmQpk Footage is not color corrected. I liked the default color balance camera produced. Below is comparison of different lenses on NEX-3 body. I moved camera closer or away from subject to match scene coverage. Difference between lenses is very subtle. For comparison I added a shot from Nikon 1 J1 camera. As you can see difference is quite substantial. Image quality of NEX is much more pleasing than one from J1. Yet, both cameras greatly misrep

This is my attempt to upgrade Lomokino with a better lens . For upgrade I chose a lens from Minolta Hi-Matic AF2-M There are plenty of cheap cameras on ebay  to choose from. I've just looked for one with smallest lens. For lomokino disassembly I used this excellent guide http://www.lomography.com/magazine/tipster/2012/02/09/lomokino-shutter-repair-and-maintenance . The lens quality of Minolta is very good, so I expected better result from this modification. But, results of my upgrade are not very good. Here is the sample video :Projected image circle from Minolta lens does not cover entire frame. The photos below show my upgrade process  Lens on the lower right is from Minolta Hi-Matic AF2-M  old plastic lenses are gouged out with hot knife and rotary tool I used matte tape to adjust focus. to be continued...

For this setup I used medium format Kodak Anastigmat 101mm lens, salvaged from old Kodak 620 camera. It is attached to excellent Ricoh KR-5 Super II camera. It's not easy to focus with this lens, it requires very steady hands. And you can only focus with wide oped diaphragm. With smaller apertures everything is too dark in viewfinder. My other , spring based lens design is much more usable . I've made some nice shots with it . With this lens, percentage of fa iled shots is too high . Potentially some very interesting photos could be take n with this setup . It's just limited to shots with wide open aperture .

After reading about DIY project that uses plunger to make a tilt shift adapter, I've decided to make one too. Local hardware shops have only jumbo sized plungers. So I designed my own adapter from the stuff I had lying around the house. I had to buy lens though. It's zenza bronica 75mm. I got it used, on ebay. Here is the picture showing lens, t-mount adapter, and spring made out of insulation support wire. I used pair of pliers to turn wire into a coil. Coil was glued to t-mount adapter. At first I glued it with "super strong" epoxy gel from the ace hardware. On the hext day dried epoxy fell off... Then I tried "extreme repair adhensive", it's holding fine, so far. For bellows I used nikon lens pouch. It does not let any light to get through. I'd use a piece of leather, but couldn't find one. Wire and hot glue are glossy and create unwanted reflections. I tried to paint them with black marker and black rubber spary, it