DIY Polaroid Swinger Model 20 to Canon EF DSLR Lens

Intro: DIY Polaroid Swinger Model 20 to Canon EF DSLR Lens

Hello fellow DSLR D.I.Y'ers.

I will share with you how I made a Polaroid Land Camera Swinger Model 20 To Canon EF DSLR Lens.
This lens will fit on any Canon EOS camera.

So what do you get?

Polaroid Land Camera Swinger Model 20 To Canon EF DSLR Lens
Non-focusable meniscus lens, Polaroid f17 100mm.
EF mount
AF-Confirm (If your adaptor allows this.)
Fixed zoom; minimum distance of 4-5 meters. (With macro bellows) Minimum distance of 20 cm.
Infinity focus.
Manual, stepless 2 bladed aperture that gives a special bokeh.
Front filter thread size of your choice.
You can use it for stills, or video.

If you make one please let me see it :-D
Also I have a flickr account, where you can see alot more homemade lenses for Canon DSLR.

STEP 1: Material Bill

Shopping list:

A Polaroid Land Camera Swinger Model 20

A good brand epoxy glue

A set of Canon EF Macro Extension Rings. I just got some cheap ones. Mine has 7,14 and 28mm. written on them. Others has numbers 1,2,3 on them. Get the 7,14 and 28mm. ones if you can. I don't know if the others are the same size. You should get this with the AF-Confirm chip installed.

Some Canon EF Macro Bellows. Again I got the the cheap stuff. You should get this with the AF-Confirm chip installed.

A Phillips head Screwdriver

A Compass. This is for drawing circles, not for finding the North Pole

A Ruler and a Vernier Caliper.

A flat black piece of plastic sheet 5x5 cm. You can get this from smashing the remains of the camera body.

A flat black permanent marker. I used a Posca marker.

Some paper.

Scissors

Note: AF-Confirm is when your normal AF lenses, confirms that you have reached focus. This is pretty handy, so get your adaptors with it.

STEP 2: Disassembling the Camera.

Disassembling the camera.

Step 1:

Open up the camera back, as if your going to load film into it.

Step 2:

Looking into the camera from the open back. Remove the battery compartment. You should see some screws that holds the lense to the camera. Unscrew the screws, and remove lense.

Step 3:

There is none.

STEP 3: The Lense

You need to modify the lense a little bit. Also a good cleaning won't hurt.

Unscrew the screw holding the plastic back of the lense, remove it. Unsrew the srews holding the metal plate, and remove it. You will now have a black plastic piece, the matal piece, and the lense assembly holding the lense, aperture and so on.

Remove the shutter, springs and electrical contacts from the metal plate.

You will cut your small piece of flat black plastic to fit the square hole that used to be the viewfinder. Glue it in place. Also the small rectangular hole on the side should be closed as well.

Let the glue harden.

Remove the aperture blades and springs.

Remove the electrical contacts from the plastic lens housing.

Clean the lense with a lense cloth. Clean the aperture blades. Clean everything else if it is needed.

Remove the spring from the aperture selector rod.

You can put custom graphics on one of the aperture blades. The scale on there is a flash scale, which is useless to us, becase we have an external flash.

STEP 4: Assembling the Lens

After having removed the flash electronics, and cleaned the lens and aperture blades, we need to assemble the lens.

Put the aperture selector rod and insert it back into the lens housing. Turn it all the way possible in the clockwise direction. Put the small black cylinder on the rod. See the picture. If you do this wrong you will not have a fully functional aperture.

Put the aperture blade with the dial on in the lens housing. Put on the second aperture blade.

Insert the locking "nut" over the aperture blades.

Bend the spring a little, so that it will be a little more springy. And insert the spring under the locking "nut" like in the picture, and seat it in it's correct possition on the blades.

Hold down on the blades a little, and confirm the aperture works.

Now you need to put back the stripped down metal plate and screw in the to black screws in the holes on the picture.

Put the plastic plate back on and screw in the screws in the top left hole and the bottom right.

Now it is time to glue the macro rings on to the lens.

Measure the inner diameter of the female filter thread. Make a circle with your compass on some paper.

Measure the inner diameter of the lens, so that you can align the paper and macro rings.

Cut out the inner and outer circle. Insert the paper piece in the female filter thread and put it ontop of the back of the lens. You need the 7 or 14mm macro ring here. Align it in in the middle as precisely as possible. You also need to align the rotation of the ring so that when you screw on the male EF adaptor the lens itself will be level. You do this by attaching the other ring and the male EF ring to the one you are about to glue. Then you rotate it so the locking slot will be at a 90 degree from the bottom. It should be on the left side now. Mke shure this is done correctly so that your lens will be level on the camera.

Now mix your 2 component epoxy glue, and glue that sucker in place. Let it dry, and remove the piece of paper. Glue the inside aswell. Be carefull don't use to little or to much.

When it is all dry, it is time to paint the glue with the flat black marker. This will minimise lens glare, because the glue is shiny.

Now screw on the other macro ring. Either the 7, or 14mm depending on wich one you glued. Put on the male EF mount ring. No you do not need the 28mm ring or the female EF adaptor.

Now the lens is finished, but we will mod it further.

FInd a UV filter with filter thread of your choice (I chose 52mm.) remove the glass and measure the inside diameter of the male filter thread. Use the compass to draw a circle on some paper. Measure the outside diameter of the plastic lens holder. Draw the circle inside the bigger circle.

Cut them out. and put the paper inside the macro tube. Now put it over the lens holder ring, and your filter will be centered.

Mix glue and glue in place. Let it dry, and remove the paper.

Congratulations now you are finished! Now you can also put on any filter attachment. Like fisheye, UV filter, polarizing filter, colour filter and so on.

STEP 5: Cleaning Your Lens When It Is Assembled

Now that your lens is assembled you can not clean your lens on the inside because of the aperture blades.

You can however remove the front lens assembly.

Take your plyers and pull on the lens, it might be loose or very tight. It will come out. See where the locking tabs are on the picture, it might help.

Now the lens, and the front will come of. Clean it all and put it back. Make sure you orient the closing tabs correctly, or you can't press it back in.

EDIT: An idea; you could make some artwork of whatever and put it in place instead of the original graphics.

STEP 6: The Results

Some shots I've done with this lens.

Comments

[mrlunna13]

Looks so classy!!

[mrlunna13]

Gorgeous pictures!! I love the "vintage" effect it does to the pictures!! Reminds me of my dad's camera from when he was "young'!!

Thank you sincerely for sharing this instructable!!

[crazyg]

it looks the business and it works as well! would like to see a straight on shot of the final camera assembly. how did you find using it with the crop factor.

[G. M.]

Ok I'll snap that shot for you. There's no vignetting on my 600D. It does get a bit dark in the viewfinder with the higher apertures. But overall I like it.

[G. M.]

Picture added. It has a vintage Minolta Polarizing Filter on.

[crazyg]

just noticed that this is your first instructable, its a good one, lots of info, people like that. thanks for snapping the pic, didnt fully realise theres extra filter bits on the front,i saw the pic with the bellows and sort of presumed,ha ha , i confess i am a bit of a skimmer when it comes to reading pretty much anything.
any way congratulations on this success and hope to see more like it.
personally i would have chosen a smaller polariser in order to not hide the polaroid boxy look ,it may help reduce flare in the optical chain, but hey thats just personal choice i have nothing against circles .

[G. M.]

Thanks. Yeah I was looking for a 37mm filter, but I only had 30, 52 and 58. 30 is to small, so it was a quick decision. As you can see in the 3'rd picture I have an extra one in the back. When I get some 37mm filters I will change it.

Check my other homemade lenses on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62235217@N07/sets

Next instructable will probably be for Agfa Click-I EF Mk. 1, or 2
Mk. 2 is not on the flickr set yet.

[crazyg]

coolstuff like your gameboy antics also, here one of mine,its got pitch prosound internal lights and some ruff stereo speakers on the back, backlight. and likewise check out my flickr

[G. M.]

Great stuff. I really like your "digital contact print film camera" it is a very interesting concept.
Also how do you get picture on the intire 35mm film? Like over the sprocket holes?

[crazyg]

if its one iv made i just give it a big hole,
the lomo cameras , spinner, diana with 35mm adapter, and holgas with 35mm adapters.can shoot over sprocket holes styraght out the box.
making a diy adapter isnt so hard ither,
id recomend the holga colour flash,
most plasticy point and shooters have redundant plastic around the film which can be chopped off.
i scan my own negs cos custom printing is a hassle.
the contact camera , i really wanted to get pixels onto film, think il have to use a slide enlarger for this which wont look nice, i will think of something.

[G. M.]

Thanks for the advice. It sounds very interesting. How about doing a colaboration? If have some ideas about getting pixels on there aswell. How many pixels do you want?

[crazyg]

sounds interesting,allways interested in throwing ideas around., im up for some build off challenges.
pixels however many is on a low grade lcd,
(they keep making the dam things better) keeping the screen to film scale 1 to 1 . when enlarged you can see the rgb.
im currenty working on a mostly scrap brass medium format camera. kinda copying this, (i found this image when researching the spinner360 camera, i was sure it was a copy of something)
today i got the basics of the shutter together it can be slit format or a twin guillotine sort of thing, not many shutters with lead and brass curtains.
and it will accept m42 lenses. looking forward to exploring the far edges of the image circle especially of my fisheye lens.

[G. M.]

Holy ---- those look awesome. How about a gameboy camera? That will get you pixels. What size is that lcd?

[crazyg]

Want a bit more definition than 8 bit at the beginning so there's space for some degridation, below is a GBC image that I finally freed from the camera,had to get an enormous win98 machine just for that purpose. Think the screen from a old digital can (6years) as long as the screen is about 35mm high, like the idea of having the battery condition and mode graphics on the final image,
Then it can go three o ways using a SLR with slide adapter allows use of the digital end but cuts the sprocket holes. Or making the cam support 2 screens sorting out a focus lens and shutter or cutting the backlight power .
Then again there's the past I route converting a point and shoot to macro ,hacking the insides a bit .then being clever with glass and mirror to get a preview.being skint helps the creativity

[G. M.]

You can make the Mad Catz gameboy cable work with WIndows XP. It's tricky but it works.

One could simply put the screen and camera infront of a macro lense, and you can use the viewfinder. But then the exposure will not cover the sprocket holes, only the normal 35mm.

[G. M.]

Oh i just found he perfect camera to mod in my bin. It's a Zeiss Ikon Contessa with a broken aperture.

[crazyg]

Past I. = plastic. Android and Google deciding what I'm writing for me again

[crazyg]

certainly will

[joeruiz]

Hello G.M. Your instructable is really interesting and I will try to make one of those lensses for my D5 Mk II, but is that flash on step 4 an old Sunpak for film cameras atached to the hot shoe of a digital camera? it is supposed to burn the camera electronics due to the high voltage used on those old flash guns, or is that a false statement?

[crazyg]

look up optocouplers , i found that a tlp3042 works good. its a nibbin that connects the signal but isolates the voltage:-)