Free Lensing

A slightly different post today. I haven't done a how to post before and this is not going to be a traditional one now.

I have been reading about free lensing and I realised I had all the things I needed.

1/ A digital dSLR camera
2/ An old lens that can be dismantled
3/ A pair of hands.

First I took apart the old lens. It was a 50mm f1.8 Zuiko lens off my old Olympus system. The lens was in a bad condition and I had another so it was stripped back as far as I could. I had intended to leave the aperture mechanism intact unfortunately due a bit of over enthusiasm and the removal of some important screws the aperture blades cam loose and ended up removed. In the end not a problem as I wanted to shoot wide open anyway.
I was finally left with a very compact unit containing only the glass lenses in a plastic unit.

The lens is just held in front of the camera, in my hand, and moved around until the picture looks right through the lens. there is vignetting and light leaks but that is the fun of the images.

Part 3

The last part of Wednesday was an attempt to do some star images. 

I needed to get away from the light pollution from cities. In Kent there is nowhere where I could go to get a clean sky. Even in Scotland I needed to be well away from Glasgow. In the morning I had noticed some possible locations on the banks of Loch Lomond near the Loch Sloy power station. 

This area was about 30 miles from Glasgow and 20 miles from Balloch. Even here the light pollution was greater than I would have liked. In the images here the clouds show lots of light reflecting of them.

The technical details were as follows.:- 

ISO 6400

30s @ F2.8

Autofocus and noise reduction off. Lens focused at infinity

Part 2

As Wednesday was such a fantastic day as far as weather and photography goes, I am going to split the day into sections. 

After getting up early and getting frozen shooting at The Knapps, I returned home and had some breakfast. The weather was good for photography and the north beckoned. 

The southern end of Loch Lomond was nothing special but I could tell that the light was getting better the further north I went. I stopped at The Loch Sloy car park and did a couple of images. The clouds had come over quiet heavy and I was beginning to wonder if the forecast was wrong. 

Driving up Glen Falloch, the snow at the roadside got deeper but still the sun was behind clouds. Turning left at Crianlarich towards Tyndrum and I could see sunlight breaking through the clouds ahead. I stopped at the Black mount to look south across Loch Tulla. There were a few snow flurries but after that the sun came out to give me some of the best photography weather in months.

Part one

Today was the day that I had set aside as a 'me' day, with the only aim was to do some photography. The weather forecast was good and with snow on the hills the only sensible choice was to go north. But before I did that I had a run out to the Knapps before breakfast. At this time of the year it takes some time for the sun to come up over the hills and hit the water. The wind was blowing strongly from the from the north and it was bitter standing waiting for the light. 

When the light came up I managed to find some nice images which set the day up well for my trip up north.