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Resurrecting a WWII optic with scraps and a 3D printer

May 6, 2013 at 23:25:39 GMT

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Falling into the interesting photo experiments category, Patrick Letourneau adapted a Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm F2.5 lens, a surplus lens originally used during World War II in bomber-mounted cameras, to use with his Panasonic GH2. A Thorium-oxide coating was used on the Aero Ektar's rear element to improve its refraction index, a fact that adds a sense of intrigue to the unique project.


Weighing about 3.2 pounds (1.45kg), the Kodak Aero Ektar was made in the early 1940s	The Up! 3D printer allows quick prototyping of custom parts without machining

Letourneau used an Up! Personal Portable 3D Printer to construct a lens mount and bracket, which he said was accurate to within 200 microns, then used an old bellows and some scraps to build a light-tight enclosure, employing an LCD diffuser to serve as a ground glass focusing screen. Though use of a 3D printer makes this project novel, modifying cameras to accept Kodak Aero Ektar lenses is not without precedent.


He focuses onto the ground glass using the rail and bellows	Then photographs the ground glass with the Panasonic GH2

The resulting images have a unique look and a built-in, vintage vignette. (Images below link to Letourneau's original post.)

You can see Letourneau's Building the Bomber Cam with 3D printing and scraps on his blog, PolygonSandwich.com

Via PetaPixel

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Comments

Total comments: 59

Whassamatta. GH2 not heavy enough for ya?

Fun project! To really take it to the next level, get a huge astro-camera size CCD sensor and use the lens as a prime!

Comment edited 3 times, last edit 7 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

Bought one 6 years ago, came with the whole camera for $45 on ebay.
The radioactive element is the one at the back, it has yellowed under it's own radioactivity. There is an excellent expert evaluation of the danger of the lens on the web. Don't sleep with it under your bed! The million or so years of radioativity were less dangerous than flying sorties in WWII.
A whole lens is legal to cross the US/Canada border but breaking or grinding the lens render it illegal to cross the border.

0 upvotes

To the guy who made this... thing.
You could have bought a 6x6 film camera for a couple hundred dollars, adapted this lens to mount on it, and then gone through the process of developing your own black and white film. Then you might have learnt something from the process.
As such, you have spent a lot of time and effort to make something that only produces a result like a waterlogged toy camera. With no flexibility.
I shudder to think how the designers of this lens would feel if they could see what you have done.

0 upvotes

Wait, I got inches mixed up with cm.
Stick a 5x4 or 8x10 sheet film where that focusing screen is instead.

0 upvotes

The articles introduction is in error. Thorium oxide was not used as a lens coating. Rather, the lens elements themselves were partially composed (up to 30%) of thorium oxide. Such lenses have properties not unlike calcium flouride elements used today.
http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses

1 upvote

Those Kodak Ektars are rising dramatically in value, primarily because of interest from Asian buyers. I was offered one the size of an office trash can for $20 about 2 years ago and like a fool didn't take it. It would go for $600 or more today. They are not resolution monsters, but they do produce interesting images on 4x5 or larger film. Plus, you get some radioactivity to boot!

0 upvotes

"Then photographs the ground glass with the Panasonic GH3" - that should be GH2.

0 upvotes

Thanks, fixed.

0 upvotes

It's not worth the effort. I will try to buy. Not into design and produce at my home for personal use. I would consider to do that if I can sell tons of that for profit.

Comment edited 43 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

I think it really would have been much more interesting if the used the bellows to implement tilt and shift. But the image quality is really disappointing...

1 upvote

A lot of folks use 3D printing for camera parts. In fact, my MakerGear M2 is primarily for building custom camera parts, and I own & use over 100 non-native-mount lenses. I can't believe anyone would take this hack seriously. It's cute in a "steampunk" sort of way, but photographically a bad joke.

Incidentally, the adapters for getting shallow DoF on camcorders work by photographing a ground glass image... but they keep the glass moving so that the surface roughness of the glass "averages out." A speaker driver could probably vibrate it enough in a slotted holder; some adapters simply spin the glass.

2 upvotes

as a matter of fact, 3D printing is also called RM (Rapid Manufacturing) and it is an ideal method for producing customised parts in small numbers (say, less than 100).

0 upvotes

Many comments on the m43 camera, but I don't even understand the point of building the lens adapter. Why couldn't he just find a lens board and retaining ring for the Kodak Aero? Once you make the lens captive his adapter, any movements of the front standard are impossible, no?

I do love DIY projects, but essentially he has made a box camera with none of the advantages of LF.

5 upvotes

You hear a lot about 3D printers these days, but this is one of the first times I've seen how useful they could be to hobbyists of all stripes. A lens mount accurate to 200 microns!

Fair play to the guy he's got a unique camera that obviously gave him a lot of pleasure to build.

I shudder to think how much the printers cost though.....

2 upvotes

200 microns.. means 0.2mm
Some of the 3D Printers are accurate even upto 0.01mm.
ZCorporation (now 3D SYSTEMS) makes some home or office use 3D Printers too.. that we can use readily. All you need is a 3D Model.

0 upvotes

Staples sells 3D printers now for as cheap as 1000 and they will deliver them to your home. One day we will be able to build cars, houses and even food (and maybe even medicine?) with these things. I could even see the possibility of cloning animals

Comment edited 16 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

It's a cool project, but you lost me at the digital camera interface. The ground glass is a focusing screen; it is NOT meant to transduce images of any quality. You might as well put a Leica lens on a camera obscura and take a picture of the illuminated wall. I would be MUCH more interested to see someone adapt the lens directly onto something like a Phase One that has a sensor area at least a little better suited to the projected focal plane of the lens.

Comment edited 13 seconds after posting

3 upvotes

+1.

As far as adapting smaller imagers to LF, they already have digital backs and scanning backs for large format cameras on the market. They are expensive, but they do exist.

There also tons of adapters that allow you to use a FF DSLR as digital backs on a large format camera - see link in my post below.

0 upvotes

It's not the site that is going the wrong way - it's some of the posters here who act like spoiled brats because something didn't hold their interest.

6 upvotes

Interesting up to that mft camera. You'd be better served by a film holder. Even then, why not build a field box and use properly sized film? No point at all going digital with a glass plane.

0 upvotes

Results not worth the effort for me, but it's always good to have a project to fill your spare time, if you have any, which I don't. Bit boring actually. Nothing more interesting out there? Or is it a quiet news day.

Comment edited 1 minute after posting

1 upvote

Hmmmmmm.... No artists here.....

1 upvote

you think science is different than arts?

0 upvotes

I have one modified for a speed graphic I used to shoot 4x5 polaroid portraits with, its on a shelf in the garage (metal box), old cine lenses are more practical, and far easier to carry around for use on mft

1 upvote

Now that's a solid repurposing. They would also be useful if someone wanted to make a bomber with optical sights.

BTW, I covet your car.

1 upvote

Αnd what was the purpose of this exactly?

4 upvotes

Fun :)

1 upvote

Printing the parts with a 3D printer is fine, but kind of pointless as you can find pretty much any lens board, lens, and retaining ring you need for any camera on Ebay.

And it's a bit of an engineering fail to simply photograph the ground glass as the IQ is not at all good. Since his box camera rig doesn't provide any perspective correction movements that you get with a typical view camera, why not just use a Holga if you want Lomo type images?

If you want to actually take advantage of LF movements - rise, fall, tilt, shift - the Horseman VCC allows you to mount your FF DSLR to be used as a kind of digital back for the front standard and bellows.

Horseman VCC Pro View Camera Converter w/ Nikon F-Mount

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/685122-REG/Horseman_21765_VCC_Pro_View_Camera.html

Oh well, at least he's not printing destructive things like guns with his 3D printer like some are. For this fact, I applaud his effort.

1 upvote

Dear DPReview,
please stop posting this garbage. It is not worth the bandwidth it waste.

9 upvotes

"I don't like it so therefore you shouldn't like it either"

10 upvotes

So he's using one of the most hotly sought-after lenses in large format photography, which can project an image to cover a 5x5" area, and acts like a 50mm f/0.7 in terms of depth of field for that format, and he's using it on one of the smallest image sensors that can accept a third-party lens, essentially wasting 98.5% of it's coverage. That's not resurrection, that's condemnation.

9 upvotes

He shoots the ground glass, so actually he's using much larger image circle than the meagre u4/3. At the cost of totally ruining image quality of course. I don't see how this is unique however. Perhaps for the folks who never shot film? Perhaps it has some sort of lomo appeal to the hipster generation? This is a very popular lens, not really that expensive or hard to find. Lots of large format photogs are shooting it on a daily basis producing photos quite a lot better than a horribly vignetted shot of a guy holding Michelin mascot... or is it a Ghost Busters character?

Comment edited 6 minutes after posting

5 upvotes

It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

3 upvotes

Using the ground glass trick is the only way you're going to be able to use that lens's full imaging circle digitally (and it's actually quite a clever solution), even medium format sensors are nowhere near 5x5".

1 upvote

You didn't read my post or look at the diagram. I'm photographing the ground glass in order to get as much of that DoF as possible.

0 upvotes

What is the maximum usable image circle the lens can provide?

0 upvotes

Its original use was on a 5x5" aerial camera.

1 upvote

Wasting time, what was he expecting? just put any $2 Vivitar lens with an eBay $2 adapter and will perform worse than that if his goal was ugly soft images.

1 upvote

Hi bakhtyar! Some of my images come out soft, especially the ones shot in a pub at night. This one is a tad sharper

http://i.imgur.com/5J484Px.jpg

Anyway, sorry that you see it as a waste of time. I had a lot of fun building it, and people love being photographed by it :).

8 upvotes

So, the result is not really important then? ;) I don't think the lens was engineered in with a such attitude towards photography.

0 upvotes

I think the lens was engineered in this case to see targets illuminated by phosphorous bombs so maximum destruction could be achieved on the next run, and of course to assess damage from the current run in the Allied campaign against the Axis powers. That's hardly upholding any imagined ideal of photography you may have, however useful at the time.

7 upvotes

Pretty cool lens, the Thorium would really only be harmful if you were holding it up to your eye day in and day out if it were an eyepiece or eyeglasses, and it does yellow over time. However, I have heard of at least one person taking a "thoriated" lens through an airport and it set off the silent radiation alarm--a couple of very concerned security guards showed up and wanted to ask him a few questions; I never found out if he was still able to take the lens on board the plane or not.

1 upvote

Thorium is radioactive, but I doubt there is enough in a lens coating to be a big concern. It emits alpha particles that are easily blocked, so they may not even be making it out of the lens. It's not a toy, that lens, but shouldn't present significant risks the way he is using it.

0 upvotes

I looked into this while preparing the story, and came across this youtube video where other owners of a Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm lens were testing its radioactivity, and found it to be 'dangerous' close-up, but dropping off quickly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TtqxJTVu0g

1 upvote

It's not a coating, but a major component of the glass itself. Also, it is worth noting that it isn't just Thorium (and its often hotter daughters) in some old military optics, but any of various heavy elements including depleted Uranium. Dangerous? Think red fiestaware or living in Denver. In other words, much higher than average background levels close-up, but not particularly dangerous under normal circumstances.

0 upvotes

Alpha particles wouldn't really be dangerous as emitted directly by the lens, since they are blocked by a few cm of air or by the outer layer of the skin. But what would be dangerous are the radioactive particles coming off the lens and getting breathed in, and once inside the body the alpha particles would hit directly the internal organs from within, with nothing to stop them. Difficult to estimate exactly this risk (not as simple as just putting a Geiger counter on top), probably still not that much, but I wouldn't take the risk and play with these "toys" anyway...

0 upvotes

Thorium-doped lens elements (up to 25% Thorium or more) can have sufficient quantities of daughter products ("impurities") so that it isn't just the Alphas coming directly from Thorium-232 decay. There are several Beta emitters in the thorium series. I regularly use a few lenses with radioactive elements because they have unique optical properties (e.g., Takumar 50mm f/1.4), but I handle them with some respect. One idiot "fixed" radioactive yellowing using a sledge hammer, http://web.aanet.com.au/bayling/repair.html -- THAT is truly dangerous, because Thorium particles could be inhaled, etc.

0 upvotes

What a nutter!!! Grinding radioactive stuff in your own backyard just for "fun"...
That sounds quite worse then with that much thorium and beta particles, I was suspecting that expecting alphas only was quite optimistic.

0 upvotes

Hi guys, Patrick here. Glad you like the project. Hopefully one day i'll have the time and skill to grab a large format camera and try this thing out with proper film :)

5 upvotes

Patrick, thanks for posting. It does look like a great project, must have been fun to build.

2 upvotes

Man, it was really a nice job. I highly appreciate the initiative. Myself, I am an engineer by profession and a photographer by ambition. 3D printers are my specialty and I am very glad to know, this technology is proving to be useful for home users too.

0 upvotes

Thanks for that video, Shawn. That's the best i've seen so far. I wont be sleeping with this lens to be sure

1 upvote

That was back when some of the best optics in the world were made in the USA by Kodak. The wide field and commercial Ektars were and still are VERY good lenses.

1 upvote

From what I remember of an article about this lens (about 15 years ago, perhaps in Sky and Telelscope). It is somewhat radioactive because of the thorium, "it can't focus blue worth a damn", it is in fact an apochromat in infra-red, red and green.

(I'd keep this lens away from young children,)

Enjoy
Harry

2 upvotes

Thorium-coated lenses turn yellow over time, which explains the problems with blues. But the 'radioactivity' is only present for about an inch or two behind the lens, and even then the amount found in lens coatings is minimal at best.

The colour issues are a bigger problem for photographers than the radioactivity. As amazing as most thorium lenses were new, I wouldn't use any of them to shoot anything but B&W film today.

1 upvote

I've used an LED lamp to clear the seriously yellowed Super Takumar 35mm f/2, by kept them in close contact for 10+ hours that the light emitter almost touch the lens. Most of the yellowing were gone in one night !

Comment edited 3 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

dpreview, you are going the wrong way - can you leave the nonsense to other sites, please!

Regards,

Sven

Comment edited 17 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

Once he gets the large format film camera set up properly, I think he needs to go to an aviation museum and photograph some WWII planes. And some WWII vets, for that matter. (Better hurry.)

1 upvote

Exactly. I have one of these Aero Ektars and did have a 5x4, but was never able to think of what I could do with an aerial lens, optimised for use at infinity, and designed to be used with ortho B&W (ie discard the blue the lens wasn't designed to bother about) to penetrate haze. I was unable to afford a Lancaster. It is a thing of beauty though.

0 upvotes

Total comments: 59

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