I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd just throw out a quick
update about breaking more gear.
A number of years ago I acquired a strange T mount lens made by Sigma,
in as near as I can tell early to mid 1960's. A semicircular fisheye
for 35mm format, of 12mm focal length. It's an amazing beast, gigantic
front element 4 inches in diameter, fixed focus, three marked f stops
8,11, and 16, on it's manual ring, but don't expect to use intermediate
stops, as they are waterhouse stops drilled into a semi circular plate
that moves as the ring is moved.
Of particular note, a couple of decades before Kodak conceived of the
APS-C film format, this lens made makes for a full frame fisheye using
those dimensions.
I shot a number of frames using it on my *ist-D, with amazing results!
Chromatic aberration, corner softness, strange color shifts, and
exposure shifts, this lens has them all and then some.
However I haven't been particularly inspired lately so I decided to find
the lens and see if I could get at least better metering results on the
K-5II.
<sigh>
I shot a few test shots and managed to dial in an appropriate exposure
compensation for outdoors in cloudy bright conditions, decided that the
resulting images didn't look too bad at web enlargement sizes, and what
the heck, maybe I would find something "artistic" that the lens defects
could actually enhance.
So I head on out.
On my first shot in the field, I unscrew the massive lens cap, raise the
camera to my eye, and...
the front element falls off onto a concrete surface!
First I'm amazed that the lens element didn't simply shatter into a
million pieces, though it is badly cracked, (photos may follow).
Second I discover that the front retaining ring that held the lens
element in place came off with the lens cap, (a really tiny set screw
that held the ring in place had loosened up).
Third when I put the now cracked element back in place tighten the set
screw, the screw on lens hood is so tightly attached to the retaining
ring that it makes a wonderful lens wrench to disassemble the rest of
the lens.
I suppose on the plus side I can examine in detail the mechanical
operation of the waterhouse stop plate and the aperture ring, but it's a
really simple mechanism, so that amusement didn't last long.
I figure that the lens defects are awful enough that the cracks won't
hurt image quality all that much, except I can't figure out how to get
the tightly bound lens cap off the damned lens.
At this rate I'll have destroyed all my equipment in another couple of
years, and my photographic endeavors will no longer be viable.
Now I guess I'll go and find something else I can break.
--
America wasn't founded so that we could all be better.
America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please.
- P.J. O'Rourke
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