Homemade 35mm -- Edited Copy for Reading

[Agus Casse]

Good job Devin, now you are the third owner know to have a Agus35 built (i love the name... why would be ??)

Have a question, how exactly did you made that part where you attach your lens ? i looks like it has a lock in system.

Again, congratulations, and i would suggest you to use a 600 sandpapers for the cd, and make little scracthes, as you will noticed then with the camera you will get a better stable image if you make the GG with it.

Also, for everybody, let me recomend to shut down the steady shot, it wont work with Agus35 and again you will get a better image, also put the auto shutter to off and set it manually.

[Noah Posnick]

Looks good, could you give me the model number of the motor parts, as I'll be making my trip to radio shack soon. One quick question: it doesn't seem that you have a way to make sure the connection between your 35mm adapter and the GL1 is secure. In other words, what's preventing the adapter from falling off the GL1 when your lets say in the process of a tilt?

[Devin Doyle]

Agus - Thanks! The part where the lens connects to the body is merely a back lens cap for an olympus lens, the only thing I did was saw off the back so that way it became a ring. It does lock, but not enough that I'd be comfortable shaking the system around a lot. It was 3 bucks at my local camera shop. Once again, kudos for coming up with the cd spindle idea and starting this thread!

Noah - It's just a 1.5V-3V motor. At radioshack they should have a drawer of them. They have larger motors, but i figured this would do the trick and is small enough. It's powered by 2 AAA's. About connecting it to my camera - there's nothing preventing it from coming off. Since my cam is at Canon's repair factory I have no way of working on that facet of the adapter - yet. So try some things on your own, it shouldn't be too tough!

[Agus Casse]

Is there too much motor noise ? i am having serious issues about audio in my agus 35, seens like i will have to put it inside, or look for a way to make it silent.

[Devin Doyle]

It's not completely silent, but then again it's not terribly loud either. There's no way you could use onboard audio with it running though. Where is your motor located? I never saw it in the pics.

[Mike Perkin]

Hi everyone,
I stumbled onto this topic about a week ago and I've been very interested in trying to make one of the Agus 35 adapters. About a year ago I did alot of research into the P&S Technik adapters but it was out of my price range, however I love the shallow DOF 35 mm lenses give the image. I decided to give the Agus35 a try. Here is my experience so far.

The camera I am using is the Sony VX-1000. I figured that the 2 big problems I would encounter would be how to attach and center the motor to the spindle base and how to attach the cd to the motor..

I purchased the motor at Radio Shack for a couple dollars. It runs off of 2 AAA batteries. I also bought a small on/off switch. Underneath the spindle base I used thin wood so I could mount the motor to something rigid using 2 machine screws that screw into the bottom plastic of the motor.

Next, with the motor secure I soldered the wires to the on/off switch and batteries and centered the plastic spindle bottom to the wood using 4 wood screws. This basically serves as a fastener for the 3 tabs on the bottom of the spindle housing which holds the housing secure.

Next using a hole saw drill bit I drilled a 72mm hole through the bottom of the plastic and wood to accept the lense of my VX-1000. I'm planning on attaching a 72mm filter ring to the outside of the hole to make fastening the camera easier.

I then attached the the cd which I sanded using 400 grit sandpaper bought from Home Depot. To center the cd on the motor I used parts from an old cd burner that I took apart. I then taped the piece of hardware in the center of the sanded cd. The hole in this hardware accepted the motor shaft and the cd centered perfectly.
Next I drilled a hole in the top of the spindle housing to attach the 35mm lense, covered it with black duck tape to block the light and assembled the base,sanded cd, top housing,35mm lense and vx-1000 together.
With all the pieces assembled to my amazment I saw the upside down image in the spinning cd with all the elements of shallow DOF. When the cd spins the image begins to take on a hologram effect. All thats left to do is capture the image with my camera.

A couple things I noticed: A 25 pack spindle did not work for me because the spinning cd was to close to the 35mm lense to give me a usable image so I had to go with a 50 pack. This gave me just about the right distance to see the image in the cd properly. And also I had to use my set of close up macro filters in order to be able to zoom in and still be able to focus my VX-1000 on the image on the spinning cd.
The images seem to be very dark. Is this normal?

Its still a work in progress. I'm gonna post some pictures of my device soon as I figure out how to post jpeg files to this board. Sorry for the long post
Bye for now
Thanks ,
Mike

[Jeremiah Rickert]

You posted right before I was going to point out, that I cannibalized an old CDROM. (note: even though it was only a 12x, it worked, and I felt strange pangs of guilt taking it apart...I think I paid $60 for the thing originally)

Anyway, in the middle of the guts, is the spindle that "captures" the CDrom when the tray slides in. (it's really rather ingenious how these things are built). The spindle is mounted so it slides into place in the cdrom's center hole as the tray shuts. After removing the spindle, there was another piece, a round plate, that is built into the cdrom housing, that is magnetized. When a CDrom is on the spindle, the little suciton-cup shaped thingy sticks to it and holds it on.

As Mike mentioned, the radio shack motors fit onto the spindles rather easily.

BTW...the one part of this process that I lack is an SLR lens. I've seen several used ones for sale fairly cheap. What sort of focal length should I get. I've seen variance from 25mm through 200mm.

Jeremiah

[Zac Stein]

jeremiah, start with a 50mm, that is the standard size... basically it will mimic close to your natural eyes perspective of vision.

Zac

[Richard Mellor]

I just finished my 'Agus35'. I found an old Sony Walkman, used the motor, epoxying it to the blank CD. there seems to be virtually no vibration. Also used a lens adapter, which I epoxied to the rear of the CD case for attachment to the camcorder. The sanded CD captures the image perfectly! My camcorder - a Panasonic PV-DV-400.

Next upgrade: ground glass.

Thanks to all for this great project and extremely helpful information.

[Jim Lafferty]

<<<-- Originally posted by Noah Posnick : Could anyone please give some recomendations for a "macro filter" for the Canon GL1 that will allow me to keep the camera focused while zoomed in at a short distance. -->>>

Century Optics makes 2x, 4x and 7x macro adapters. They do not come cheap, though -- $210 from B&H.

I'm making an Agus35 Pro for my GL-1 without a macro adapter. I'll let you know if/how I get it to work.

- jim

[Jim Lafferty]

<<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen : What is the concept here?-->>>

The concept is that you use your DV camera to record a 35mm image suspended on a semi-permeable screen.

That's it.

How you get that done best is up to you, though Agus's method is a good one - use a clear disc that is sanded to a 'frosted' surface and spin it through the beam of light passing through a 35mm lens. The disc suspends the image in mid-air, for your miniDV camera to focus on. You set the focus on your DV camera manually, and use the 35mm lens to pull focus with.

Some thoughts:

People seem to be thinking of ways to upright the image and confining their answers to the adapter. Why not use mirrors mounted via a hood on the LCD screen to upright the image?

You could sand the disc irregularly, leaving gaps that are entirely clear, or place black tape on the disc, too. With this you might get some interesting strobe effects, like the lower shutter speeds on the Sony cams.

The disc could be multi-colored, or you could use multiple discs of different colors instead of filters.

- jim

[Agus Casse]

My minolta lens are 50mm 1:2 and i get no vigneting.

[Yang Wen]

So this clear disk has to be in a light proof casing correct? Otherwise, the outside light would bleach out the projected image from the SLR lens. Correct? and how far should this spinning disk be from your Camcorder lens? is it dependent on the camcorder lens and better done with a trial and error strategy?

[Agus Casse]

check out this lens, you can also have zoom, and it have a good aperture size.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...u=61424&is=REG

[Yang Wen]

Ok I grabbed a fake CD thing from my spindle and got my Sigma 35-135 AF zoom lens and just held the two things up in front of my DVX100. I had the DVX's lense focus into macro-mode and the CD was in focus but As you can see, there is incredible vignetting. It seems I can only get a small round image to project. What is the trick of having the 35mm lens image fill the entire frame?

http://www.umich.edu/~ywenz/DVX/GhettoAttempt.wmv

thanks