Vest Pocket Kodak As A Canon Lens

A girl I know wanted to watch me build this, but she couldn’t make it over so I decided to document the crap out of it. I took a bunch of photos & precariously suspended my 5D above my head like this so I could shoot some video. It came out alright so I thought I’d share it with you guys too — aren’t I nice!

I’d seen a few people hacking old cameras around to make them into lenses for shiny new cameras around the internet and I wanted a slice of the action. I picked up a Vest Pocket Kodak (circa 1915) from eBay for about £15, I grabbed some M42 extension tubes & a cheap M42 to EF adaptor. Getting it all together was pretty straight forward, the old Kodak had a window on the back that popped right off & you can see right through to the lens. I grabbed the skinniest of the three extension tubes, lined it up & glued it right on the the back! BOOM! That’s pretty much all there is to it — let the glue set, screwed it onto the adaptor and sliped it on my camera.

Vest Pocket Kodak As A Canon Lens - Vest Pocket Build Photographed by Rick Nunn

Tools

This is what I used to bring this beast together.

Vest Pocket Kodak As A Canon Lens - Vest Pocket Lens Photographed by Rick Nunn

First Shot

Which you can also see on Flickr if you like that sort of thing.

Vest Pocket Kodak As A Canon Lens - Vest Pocket Portrait Photographed by Rick Nunn

Kinda hard to believe that this shot was taken with a lens that’s around 100 years old… it’s remarkably sharp & even the colours straight out of the camera were pretty good. The bellows give it awesome macro powers too. Honestly though, I was expecting a photo with a little bit more of a ‘vintage’ feel.

The Video

Watch this beast come together in stop motion style! 

Been playing around with After Effects a bit more recently — still rough around the edges but I am getting better at it. My main problem is, waiting for shit to render makes me die inside.

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