Broken lens turns out to be an upgrade.

DI-Joe

This is interesting. I have a Canon 18-55mm EF-S kit lens that came with my 30D. Well one day i was getting bored with and I was lusting after a nifty Sigma lens. So I did some blase shooting and put my camera down on the couch next to me. I did cap the lens but my EF-S lens was still on the body. So I ended up forgetting it was there and kicking back a bit later, landing my heel firmly down on the top of the lens pretty much crushing the barrel down into the housing. I was devastated at first, the barrel was cocked off sideways and it was stuck... After some fiddling, I muscled it back straight and the zoom and focus moved again. I put the lens back on my camera to test it and the AF motor was stripped off its gear and just spun in the air, and at the time, I couldn't focus on anything(I simply pointed the camera across the room at the tv and tried to manually focus) so I was absolutely crushed that I could have done that to my own gear.. Well... a few days later after being all depressed about it, I picked up the lens and looked through it... thought about it and decided to see if the focus distance had just changed...

Sure enough, I managed to turn my cheapo EF-S zoom into a WIDE-ANGLE 18mm MACRO with a minimum focus distance of 0". I can literally put a penny on the lens itself and focus on it. BUT!! It gets better. Because of the smaller size of the elements(because it's an EF-S) there's not as much distortion, and I still have the same relative depth of field as its original condition. This my friends, made for some very interesting shots!

Enjoy:







Fantastic angles and depths of field achievable with this lens. Focusing is a bit difficult as I said before the AF motor is stripped, but I just hold the shutter release down and listen to the motor it indicates when it's getting close and as soon as it's focused it releases so I still get crisp AF shots. I've had a lot of fun with this.

See the whole set including some interesting self portraiture here.

SloYerRoll

Very cool!
Way to make lemonade out of lemons!

I'd love to have glass that focuses that close. I'm pretty sure I'd just end up w/ busted glass though....

DI-Joe

Well since these lenses are so cheap(less than 100 bucks on ebay) I'm going to get another and try to engineer it to do this same function but with AF intact. I've already had a request from another photographer for this lens type because of the rarity of the features. I'd hope that I could achieve this same function without having to axe kick it first.

LiquidAir

DI-Joe wrote:

Well since these lenses are so cheap(less than 100 bucks on ebay) I'm going to get another and try to engineer it to do this same function but with AF intact. I've already had a request from another photographer for this lens type because of the rarity of the features. I'd hope that I could achieve this same function without having to axe kick it first.

Try an unmodified lens with a 12mm extension tube to see if it behaves the same way. I put a tube on my 17-40 and it focuses as close as I am willing to get to the front element at the 17mm end of the range.

DI-Joe

LiquidAir wrote:

Try an unmodified lens with a 12mm extension tube to see if it behaves the same way. I put a tube on my 17-40 and it focuses as close as I am willing to get to the front element at the 17mm end of the range.

Well, I don't have any unmodded lenses laying about. :P I'd imagine that using an extension would change the depth of field. It would distort less though because you'd be looking through the "sweeter" parts of the glass. Still the same film plane, still the same number of elements.

I have closeup filters and the such, so short focus distance isn't an issue, and I'd be willing to bet that with that 12mm adapter you weren't focusing at true 17mm focal length due to the magnification of the image on the sensor since the lense was further away from the film plane(or you effectively moved the film plane back.) The characteristics of this lens are still VERY unique, wide angle, macro, extremely short focal distance, very low distortion at wide angles and still a very acceptible depth of field at wide aperture.