Making a lens for a mirrorless camera from an old 35mm point and shoot

Making a lens for a mirrorless camera from an old 35mm point and shoot. 

If you go to Google and search for 'make disposable lens for camera' you'll get thousands of posts, videos and adverts for just that: making or buying a body cap lens from bits of a disposable camera. Like most people, I suspect, I first came across this idea from a YouTube video by @MathieuStern (https://youtu.be/2ymKt4uhTOw?si=PWsfqzr2JF-33M4u) who took apart a Kodak disposable camera, harvested the lens then cut a hole in a spare body cap, and fitted the lens inside. And it worked! Quite nicely, in fact.

So of course, I was quite taken with this idea and wanted to give it a try. Naturally, being me I was too mean to fork out €15 or more for a Kodak disposable camera so took a slightly different course. It was during the first Frugal Film Project, and I was really enjoying playing with an Agfa Clack. But what I really wanted to do with the Clack was flip the lens. I couldn't bring myself to destroy my original Clack, so I bought another one just to take out tge lens and flip it. At the same time I picked up a Keystone Le Clic Fun Shooter FS40, a 35mm point and shoot, with the express intention of taking out the lens and flipping that, too.

Did I mention this was in September 2023? I didn't? So, what happened? (http://www.keithdevereux.com/2023/09/more-lens-flipping-in-vintage-cameras.html?m=1) Well, I flipped the lens of the Agfa Clack quite successfully, and had (and continue to have) hours of fun with that. But although I removed the lens from the Le Clic, and drilled a (not quite central) hole in a spare body cap that I had knocking around, no matter how I tried I couldn't get the flipped lens to focus properly. Then I got sidetracked with something else, and the lens and the body cap were temporarily put aside for later. And 'later' never came, I forgot all about the little plastic lens.

Wind forward a year and it's July 2024. I'm tidying out a camera bag to pack some cameras and lenses to take on holiday. Unzipping one pocket I find a little filter box, which rattles, and inside is the lens cap and plastic lens from the Le Clic. Well, I couldn't do anything then, but now it's September and we're back from holiday so it's time to make that little plastic lens into something I can use with my mirrorless cameras.

One of the problems I had was getting the lens to focus properly (or at all) when flipped so I abandoned that idea and decided to just mount it onto the body cap. I also discovered that the lens focuses much better with an aperture hole (some have used the aperture from the camera, but in the Le Clic it was all moulded plastic and impossible to get out). I found a nice rubber washer in the toolbox which was thick enough to get a nice focus with the body cap and had a centre hole that was about the same as the Le Clic. 

First of all I mocked up the lens with black insulating tape, and it worked really well. So I brought out the heavy duty adhesive and glued all of the pieces together. Once dry, which doesn't take long with the two-part adhesive, I fixed the body cap lens to an Olympus Pen E-PM2. Setting the camera to aperture priority, where it selects the appropriate shutter speed, I set out 'around the block' for some exploration. The images were a little 'soft', of course,  but we're using a plastic lens so I wasn't expecting pin sharp images — and would have been really disappointed if they had been. 

Of course, there's no way that this lens will replace my Olympus Body Cap Lens, but it was certainly a fun exercise. I would add that the sweet spot focus-wise for this lens seems to be roughly 3m away, so I'm going to have to be picky with what subjects I choose to use this lens.

#LeClic, #DisposableCamera, #Camera, #Experimental, #LensFlip, #Dreamy, #Blurry, #PointAndShoot, #Mirrorless,