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So I came home from this little KIA (KIA, like the car, not Killed In Action LOL) shoot I did today, no biggie. When I got home my Dad had told me that he wanted two bags of ice. So I got back in my car and started to drive to Top Foods... I was making this left turn onto the main road when I heard and felt two thuds.. and then a very prominent and loud BANG. I looked back only to realize that I had forgotten that I left my camera on the roof of my car before I left.

It laid there in the middle of the road in pieces. I turned around, stopped, picked everything up when it was safe. Well, I got the bags of ice, came home and decided to have a little fun with this lens.

I had kind of wanted to mess around with my 1.8 lens anyways, it's cheap so it doesn't bother me much and I always wanted to see if I can recreate that LENSBABY effect. So I thought, wow what an opportunity!

SO! What did I do first? I was trying to figure out how to put it all back together, I did that.. It wasn't very complicated.

Once I dealt with all the little tiny pieces I was left with basically, 4 main segments.



So, I attached the rear segment of the lens to the front like this..



Only to realize that the focus ring can NOT be put on afterwords, so I took it apart and put the focus ring before the front element, and then attached the two again.





Well I had this funky little thing and I tried to take some photos with it and guess what, it was pretty awesome!

It was like a lensbaby lens. Here's some examples, and once again these are test shots.. Not trying to be artsy or anything, I was just getting used to it and testing it.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l35/cilayin/IMG_2618-1.jpg
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l35/cilayin/IMG_2621-1.jpg
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l35/cilayin/IMG_2624-1.jpg
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l35/cilayin/IMG_2625-1.jpg

So that was all cool and fun but I didn't want to have the lens not mounted to the camera. See I was focusing by moving the lens back and forth from the camera body. It's fun but.. Quite hard and it gets VERY tiring after a while. If you don't believe me, try it.

Anyways. So I was trying to put the lens into the main housing but it wouldn't fit because there's a lever inside that flip the auto/manual focus on the side of the lens.



So what'd I do? I bent it smile haha I can't auto focus anyways because that ribbon that connects the lens to the camera was broken in two (Orange cable, shown earlier). So I didn't care.



And now, here it is!



Sorry about the last picture being blurry, slow shutter speed wink

But anyways! Look at that!

However when I attach it to my camera and take a photo, the shutter locks and it says "Err 01". So I can't take a photo?

Wrong!

When I put the lens on the camera, I simply don't turn it all the way so it doesn't lock! And it works! smile

Dude! I don't know if I should laugh or feel bad... I know (even though the Nifty Fifty is a cheap lens) that it's one of my favorite lens. Very nice job redoing it though!

Did anything else got broken when you drop your bag? Btw, how DARE you forget your camera bag outside your car! That should be a felony under the Photographer's Law! LOL! lol

"Camera Negligence"

If I broke any of my lenses I would cry. crying

That is a really awesome effect tho. I'm glad you got to try that out, and I'm glad I was able to find out that it works without destroying one of my lenses (or hurting my baby...)

Wow, dude you realize how fortunate you are the glasses weren't scratched right? eek surprised

Good thing you only have to wait a couple more weeks till you get your 50mm f/1.2 biggrin When are you planning on replacing your 1.8?

lol, its true. that Is pretty cool.
+ This: "When I put the lens on the camera, I simply don't turn it all the way so it doesn't lock! And it works!"

...brilliant!

Also, another note. The lens kept falling apart.. The rear and front (In the first picture the two center pieces with the two pieces of glass) so... I got some epoxy and put it around the seams where the two met and now it's as solid as ever. I'm also going to be grinding down the glass a little bit later and adding a few things to it when I have some time and try to get some neat effects going. Who knows!!!

I was also thinking of trying to make this lens act like a pin hole camera but just doing it to the lens so if I want that look I can just pull out this lens. Who knows haha BUT that being said.. Here's some quick pics I took not too long ago with the same lens.

They're not great pics but one thing I wanted to share was that this can act as a macro lens as well.

Here's the shot with another 50 1.8 lens I had laying around and I couldn't get it any closer because it simply wouldn't focus that close.



But back to my uh, special lens lol taken off the camera I can literally move the lens much closer to the (In this case) carrot making the carrot much larger and just fine tune the focus by tilting or shifting the lens slightly and get some really tight shots.




And it's pretty sharp still! Which you can see in the first pic from these two above.

And yes. I know the carrot is a little odd. I'm working on some things right now, it's hush hush so I can't say much haha but it's really interesting and really fun! Depending on some of the shots I might be getting some of them in a photography book, blah blah blah. Long story. ANYWAYS like I said, these are crappy pics. I just wanted to show you some examples of this unique little lens I have haha

Oh and another thing, when I'm holding then lens far away from the camera there's a huge problem with light spilling into the sensor and just blowing out the image. I correct that usually by just using my hand thats holding the lens to simply block whatever the main light might be (Sun, lights, whatever).

I'm thinking about buying some tubing (Gotta find the right size GRRR) and then figuring out a nice (and cheap) way to attach this all to my camera. I might cut off the end of the 1.8 lens housing I broke and attach that to the tubing so I can lock it in on the body... so then I'd really have something like a lensbaby, muse, composer, whatever.

It's pretty spiffy imo and now, back to work! VROOM VROOM!

I also busted my 50mm 1.8 .. which I eventually replaced..

happy to have invested on a better and durable nifty fifty