quirky lenses

[danbliss]

I have a (soon to be outdated) 5d. I am curious about opinions regarding quirky lenses. I suppose lensbabies are the first to come to mind.

Anyway, I was thinking what lens should I consider that I never thought to consider. :-)

 

Dan

[josephmolieri]

Depends on your budget have you ever checked out the tilt lenses http://www.photo.net/equipment/canon/tilt-shift For the most part I don't bother much with weird lenses or filters because most of the desired effects can be done in post.

[macaddicted]

Forget the lens. Convert it to IR.

 

http://www.lifepixel.com/shop/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=3

[tim_klimowicz]

Have you tried digital pinhole stuff?<br>

<br>

I made a couple body cap pinhole "lenses" for my 30D, and they've turned out quite well (though sensor dust begins to

become a bit of a problem, and they don't seem to have the vignette that the film ones I've made in the past have had,

for some reason).<br>

<br>

This is how I did it:<br>

-Buy an extra body cap or two.<br>

-With extra fine sand paper, sand off the front logo so that the face of it is flat & smooth.<br>

-With a screwdriver hand-drill and a bit no larger than about 1/8", begin softly but firmly drilling into the very center of the

body cap, on the INSIDE of the cap.<br>

-Stop occasionally to gauge how deep you've drilled. When you feel you've gotten a good halfway through or so, stop.

Softly twist the drill a few more times to smooth out the small concave pit you've made.<br>

-With a metal screw or pin or something else with a pretty firm but sharp point, begin pressing into the middle of the

concave pit, again from the inside out, with the body cap laying front-down on a table. A slightly softer surface (wood, a

book, etc) could help here.<br>

-Keep pressing with the screw/pin/etc, softly twisting the cap as you push to distribute the pressure smoothly.

Occasionally, check the front of the cap to see if the plastic is showing the tell-tale sign of warping as the screw/pin

begins to almost penetrate, which should be visible as a small white bubble.<br>

-Once you get a bit of a bubble formed on the front from the pressure, lay the fine sandpaper down on the table, flip the

cap around, and begin gently sanding the front surface again. With just a bit of sanding, you should begin to wear down

the bubble, exposing the hollow center of it. If it doesn't show, carefully push through with a bit more pressure with the

screw/pin from the inside again, and then sand some more. Patience helps a lot here.<br>

-Once done, finish up by "polishing" the hole with the screw very gently, and sanding some more, and then finally

washing to remove the plastic dust.<br>

<br>

If this is all done carefully and patiently, you should have a very solid pinhole body cap, which -- on my cropped-sensor

body -- looks to be roughly equivalent to 35mm (deeper with the 1.6 crop, of course). Of the two I made, the smaller one

has an aperture that calculates to be somewhere between f/250 and f/500 -- quite small.<br>

[alan_ginman]

I've bought a few old M42 Pentax thread lenses to try on my 5D with an adaptor. I haven't had time to use them yet but they are cheaply available from ebay.

 

By the way, wrt your first sentence, nothing that is going to happen soon is going to reduce the ability of your 5D to take good pictures.

 

Cheers

 

Alan

[danbliss]

Joe, I am a big fan of the tilt and shift. I have an old Linhof 2x3 Tech IV (although I don't use it much anymore). It would

be nice to have movement on the 5d.

 

David, the IR thing does sound like fun. I have not thought about it seriously before.

 

Tim, I like the pin hole thing. It sounds like a fun weekend project too.

 

Alan, I am curious about the experiences that people have had with adaptors using other brands of lenses. And, you are

right about the 5D. My comment about the 5D was meant as a joke, because of all the hype around its replacement. I

expect to happily use my 5D for a long time to come.

 

Dan

[gregf]

Seriously, the TS-E 24mm is the most useful, even though it my least used lens. $1100 is pricey for a single (or dual) use lens. I only use the shift (never played that mush with the tilt). But when you get those great cityscape photos where everything is in the correct perspective, it's worth every penny!

[alan_bryant1]

There's great fun to be had with a bellows. I once used one to make a zoom pinhole lens, roughly 70mm to 150mm, and very very slow. I didn't do anything fancy at all: Just wrapped aluminum foil around end of the bellows and stuck it with a pin. Not the best lens I've owned, but fun to play with.

 

You can also get any old 50mm, reverse it, mount it on a bellows, and take amazing macro shots. Forget mere 1:1 macro, a rig like this can fill the whole frame with a match head. Of course it's a pain to use, the viewfinder is almost black, you have to use a tripod and a very bright light source, and it's often easier to bring the subject to the camera, not the other way round. But the pictures can be amazing, and none of the equipment is expensive.