Aquaponics Tomato

Its cold and rainy here in South Australia, and I keep picking tomatoes.

Winter isnt a good time for tomatoes, but mine seem to be having fun anyway.

My four tomato plants that are growing so their roots are suspended in the fishtank water seem to be fruiting a lot later in the season than they should be. The plants are out in the cold, but their roots are inside the fishtank which is inside a little growhouse.

The plants look like this.

And they are still doing a lot of flowering.

And there are plenty of fruit all over the vines.

And the fruit are still ripening.

These were todays pickings.

Not many today, but there are always some. And a few didnt make it inside.

And there are a lot more on the vines that are nearly ripe. Ripe enough to eat.




All these pics were taken today. Its winter in the southern hemisphere, so the tomatoes should have stopped fruiting a while ago.

Its strange that they are still growing and fruiting this late. Strange enough that I thought Id contact someone from one of our universities. I remember someone from my research into bees, who was working on growing native bees to pollinate tomatoes. Im not sure if there were a bee person or a tomato person, but I emailed them in the hope that if they dont care, they might know someone who does.

It might save the industry a bit of money if it turned out the entire plant didnt need to be kept warm to keep them fruiting.




120 Things in 20 years says to be on the lookout for tiny hot houses with tomatoes growing out of PVC tubes, coming to a winter tomato farm near you. Or not.

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Photography Camera hacking

Ive bought a new camera!

But more importantly for right now, my old camera didnt focus any more, so I thought I might pull it to bits to see if I could fix it.

A camera hack if you like.

Well its hacked now.

But in the process of attempting to fix it, I thought it might be grit or something stuck in the focus gears. I figured I might be able to override the emergency shutdown on lens fail, and just use brute force to get past the grit.

But before pulling it apart I thought Id look for a software hack to manually focus the thing. Its a Canon Powershot A490 point and shoot (or at least it was), so it doesnt normally have manual focus.

I found much more than a focus hack, but also much less.

Much less in that I still couldnt do manual focus, but so very much more in that I found CHDK - Canon Hack Development Kit.

CHDK is amazing. Its a kit full of files that you install onto your SD memory card, put it into your camera, then use the update firmware option (only seen on my camera when the CHDK is on the card) of your camera to install all the new functionality. It does things like...

• motion detection
• increment focus to automate focus/photo stacking as mentioned in the previous post
• depth of field calculator
• exposures from 2048s to 1/60,000s with flash sync
• change the layout and visibility of you on screen display info
• etc etc etc (so much more)

Look here to see a slightly bigger list, but still not all of it.

And here for the manual which covers more.

But even more can be found on the forum in the form of scripts that can be loaded into your camera. There are scripts that do motion detection fast enough to catch lightning strikes. (less than 60ms I think it was - dont quote me)

So in spite of just buying a new camera, Im off to see if the $20 camera I saw in the electronics shops bargain bin is a cannon powershot. 

120 Things in 20 years CHDK camera hack - Awesome. 

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Photography Hack a macro lens from a zoom lens

I decided to make a more permanent macro lens.

The improvised one here was just too crazy to use. Everything had to be held together with tape, string, and luck.

It turns out its pretty easy to hack a macro lens, if you already have a short zoom lens you dont need.

There are a lot of canon kit lenses that came with the cameras floating around out there for only a few dollars. The best price I saw was $3.98 US.

The lens Im using is a canon EF 35-80mm zoom. I got it for free from someone who paid around $5 for it in Japan.

 The first step is to find some screws that might let you get inside.

The object here is to remove the front lens element.

My screws were found under a sticker, but different lenses hide the screws in different places.

Removing the sticker revealed 3 screws.

The sticker is useless after you remove it, so dont try this unless you want the change to be permanent.

Thats the wrinkled corpse of the sticker in the background.

Undo the screws.

This allows the top lens element to be removed.

This lens cluster does the focusing as far as I can tell.

At this point you can take a macro shot, but the lens will leak a lot of light onto your censor. The black plastic surround covers a gap between the outer lens casing, and the inner sleeve that controls the zoom.

In my lens, it wasnt possible to remove the lens from the plastic surround, so I had to cut it off.

If you were trying to do this as a temporary thing, and wanted to try it before you commit, all you need to do is cover the lens front with something light proof with a hole around 2cm in diameter in the centre.

Im guessing gaffer tape would work well.



The main thing is to create a cover for the gap between the outer casing and the inner zoom sleeve.

The lenses are of no use, but the plastic surround is very useful, because it has a screw thread to take filters.

A clear glass filter, or a UV filter will be the thing that keeps dust out of the lens.

The large black plastic thing is the bit we are keeping.

There was an extra hole that I filled with a screw to keep everything light tight.

A clear glass filter, and its all done.












The results are pleasantly surprising. The original lens could zoom into around 6cm in width. This is closer to 1cm.

The focus ring no longer does anything, but the zoom still zooms. 

There are two ways to focus. 

Moving the camera or the subject until the scene is in focus is where you start. The distance from the lens that the subject needs to be is only around 5cm. Once you have the subject roughly in place, you can use the zoom to change the point thats in sharp focus. 

The zoom also works as a zoom, and changes the field of view between 12mm and 25mm from one extreme to the other. ie at full zoom (as per the shot of the pencil, you can fill the frame with a 12mm object)

All in all, not quite as functional as a proper zoom lens, but for $5 it represents a pretty good compromise, and something Id call a total success.

120 Things in 20 years - If canon just made the front lens element removable, I wouldnt have needed to do this lens hack to convert a zoom lens to a macro. 

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Photography New to me Canon EOS 20D camera

My new camera is a lot like my old camera in so far as they both take pictures, and they are both 8 megapixel cameras.

But after that they diverge a bit.

The Sanyo Xacti that Ive been using for the last 1300 photos Ive taken was gifted at me by someone (Thanks anonymous company) when I really needed a replacement because all the point and shoot digital cameras Ive bought to make this blog (I think its 3 now) fall over just after 5000 happy snaps.

5000 seems like a lot when I put it in print, but in terms of time, that equates to less than a year per camera.  Sure they cost less than AU$100, but I still want more than a year out of anything I buy.

This one that Ive been using is still going strong, and does a pretty good job of it I suppose, but I found the interface very heavy going.

It has quite a few options and features, but all of them have to be accessed via a clunky multi-level menu system. That means that every time you want to do anything other than what its set to do now, you have to explore a stack of menus to finally find what you need, and by the time youve found it, the ladybird has finished eating its aphid, and flown away.

My new camera on the other hand is a zillion times better to work with. Ive only had it for around 10 hours, but it already feels comfortable.

Its taken around 1200 pictures so far in its life.

I have very greasy fingers.

Im eating zucchini and haloumi fritters.

Delicious.


The new camera is a Canon 20D. It was originally sold for around AU$1500 (Australian dollar) in 2004, and was described as a "semi-professional" or "prosumer" camera at the time, which of course means substantially more than other imaginary words and their associated imaginary metrics.

But on the whole, the camera rocks.

Thats my official rating out of 5.

It has a 4 GB CF memory card, which is the size of a bulky circa 2012 64GB mp3 player, and that cost around the same as a bulky circa 2012 64GB mp3 player. It takes a while to transfer photos, but it has very nice functionality, and best of all has an interface that works.

It also comes with some nice lumps of glass in the lens. It seems to be the lens that lets down lots of little point and shoot cameras. The quality of the photos taken by my new 8 megapixel camera is a lot better than those Ive taken with an 8 megapixel point and shoot style camera.

The second lens feels a bit like it might blow away, but at $10 its a very nice thing to have around.

The camera came with a Canon 18-55mm f3.5 image lens, with image stabalizer. Ive just discovered I love image stabalizing. Image stabalizing allows you to be a bit shakey, and have the lens do some stuff to fix it.

As I understand it, there are exactly two ways to do image stabilizing.

• 1. Project an image onto the censor, so that the image is a little larger than the censor, and the image has some extra image in the margins. Then have the camera track your shakey projection, and then use magic or software or something to knit together a nice crisp image.

• 2. Track some points on the image, and move the lens around a bit so that any given point on the censor always sees the same bit of the image, or move the censor to achieve the same thing.

• 3. Use gyroscopes mounted on at least two axes to resist the movement of the entire camera. Things spinning around like to keep doing it. If you take the tire off your bike (stop first) and hold the axle while someone else spins it as fast as they can, it becomes difficult to change the angle its on. This is why a spinning top (do they still have those?) stays upright, and is simply due to the universe being an amazing place.

Amazing!

The camera shows its age through its 8 megapixelness, as at the time of writing, thats about 16 megapixels short of where it should be.

I bought it from a second hand camera store in Japan for $150 with the Canon 18-55mm zoom, and I got the second lens, a Tamron 100-300 zoom, for $10 from the bargain bin.

Thanks Tom.

Toms a friend of mine.

Hes really good at buying way too much camera gear from junk bins. His hobby includes buying those instamatic film cameras that were big in the 70s. He likes to buy them when they have rolls of film still in them so he can process the film. In some subtle way, thats slightly different from buying some old photos.

Which is nice.

For him.

Hes kind of a time traveller, but he only gets to look, and doesnt get to choose what he looks at.

Mostly he gets to look at darkness.

Sometimes darkness, but with slightly mouldy edges.

Luckily, I dont suffer from collecting things other than my collection of odd people I know.

Toms one of my favourites.

Thanks Tom.




120 Things in 20 years - One of the best parts about getting my new, second hand Canon 20D camera, was getting to look at the Japanese supermarket junkmail it was packed in. Its been 20 years since I was in Japan, and the junkmail paper is now of even better quality.

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Stirling engines Balloon Power pistons

My original balloon power piston looked like this.

It had a connecting rod glued to the centre, and the other end of that rod connected to the cam shaft. The result was that as the air was heated in the chamber with the displacer, it expanded, filled this balloon, and pushed up the connecting rod.





I think it also pulls as the air cools and contracts, but that isnt very obvious either way. In that video (see link in first sentence) you can see the balloon inflating and giving the connecting rod a little push.

Im amazed that the air can expand and contract at such a high frequency. Im amazed these things work at all.

My power piston design was a little rough, and to be honest I was lucky that it worked at all.

The balloon kept slipping around under its rubber bands, making the connecting rod feel some resistance as the balloon reached its limits of free movement. The result was some extra friction where it wasnt necessary.

What I need is a bit more room for error.

With that in mind, I did some research and found what I think might be a useful design, and also came up with one myself that might work pretty well.

I found this one in use already and mine was made from a balloon neck, and a plastic bottle top.

To start with I created a plastic disk around 25mm in diameter by trimming off the sides of a plastic bottle cap. 

It was pretty easy to do with scissors, and a cut that went in a spiral gradually cutting away the side.

I also have a copper elbow that will be the power pistons basic form.

This will take the place of the ungainly plastic bottle with the hole hacked into the side as seen in the top-most picture on this post.

I cut the neck off a balloon and inserted the plastic disk. The connecting rod would be glued to the centre of this disk at the top.

The cut end of the neck is stretched over the copper elbow so that it looks like this when at its highest. (this would be the end of the power stroke)

And like this at its lowest.

It looks quite neat, and this is probably the design Ill use unless it proves to require too much air expansion to fill it.

My design includes the same section of balloon neck, and a cable tie to secure the top.

I tightened the cable tie with pliers  and then cut the rest of the balloon away with scissors.

It looks like this at its lowest. Or near its lowest.

It might be the case that this design will prove useful when used entirely at the low end. It requires much lass change in air volume to move 10mm up or down from its pictured position.







I have no idea if it will be of any benefit to use this (green) design, but It should be easy enough to try both with my adjustable cam shaft.




120 Things in 20 years - When it comes to balloon power pistons for Stirling engines, I have standards above which, I will not go.

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Photography Improvised macro lens mould study

I got another lens from a junk bin in a camera store.

This one is a canon f 1.4, 35-80mm zoom.

It has an auto focus motor that makes a sound a bit like you might hear if you put a blender in a blender, but the auto focus still works.

The bits that dont work so well, are the lenses.

The problem is mould inside the lens.

Not uprising for a 500 Yen lens sitting in the junk bin of a camera store in the country that invented humidity.


Thats a ridiculously close up shot of the mould.

Ridiculously close up.





I dont have any way of doing macro shots with my new camera, so I had to improvise.

I took the shot of the mould with this home made bit of kit.

The blue lens cloth is there to keep the light out of the improvised macro lens, because the small length of toilet roll acting as an extension tube  isnt light tight.

The lens attached (thats a generous description) to the camera is actually on backwards, and is resting against the other end of the toilet roll tube.

The lens resting on the red kitchen scrubber is the new one with the mould garden inside.



The torch is a torch.

The torch is there because the cameras lens has the aperture set as small as it will go (f36) to try to get at least some of the mould in focus.

I didnt really achieve that.

The exposures were around 30 seconds long (many minutes without the torch), and other people were working in the house at the time. My desk is a wobbly kitchen table top heavy with old CRT computer monitors, and all the other junk I like to keep at hand. As as a result it amplifies any movement from people, traffic, and the fridge and freezer compressors.

If you put a glass of water on a desk like mine and look at the reflection, you will see the reflected image dance all over the place. Normally it isnt a problem, because the camera and lens would both move at the same time, but with this contraption, there was nothing of substance connecting the lens and the camera.

Tricky.

Anyway...

The lens has mould in it.

The image on the left was taken with the canon 18-55mm lens that came with the camera.

The image on the right is taken with the mouldy 35-80mm lens.

The camera was set to the same settings for both shots.



Mould is not a friend of the lens.

The point of all this, is to point out that I wont be taking an angle grinder to my lens in some future post  without reason.

Actually Ill try to open it up and clean it, but there is a fair chance its bits of glass are coated in a very delicate plastic coating, called coating. If thats the case the mould may have become a permanent fixture by etching its way into the coated bits.

The mould appears to be on only one element, so I might be able to salvage some other bits and make a proper, mould-free macro lens.



120 Things in 20 years warns that when I say "proper" I mean the improvised macro lens might employ slightly fewer toilet paper tubes, and where they are unavoidable, they might be made a bit less wobbly and light leaky.

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Aquaponics Cucumber

Cucumber.

Strange word.

Anyway, Ive been getting good results with hand pollination. For some reason the female flowers (the ones with the fruit attached to the back of them, open well, but the males dont.

I thought bees were supposed to do this work. There are no bees anywhere doing anything. Is there a strike or something. Perhaps people are talking about it on TV. Maybe there is a reason to watch TV after all.

I planted my four cucumber plants in the corner of the growbed nearest the door. The door stays open for summer, so I trained the plants to grow outside.

Actually it doesnt really matter if the door was open or closed, they could be made to grow under the door with a little pruning.






Ive been using a small, soft artists paint brush to tickle all the flowers on my plants and do the bees work for them.

Every female flower Ive hand pollinated has produced a very tasty fruit, but none of those that I left for the bees have manage to set fruit.

There seems to be a lot of fruit. More than we could use, but they are finding good homes with friends and relatives.

One even went to a friendly relative.





120 Things in 20 years - Cucumber is still a funny word.

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Aquaponics Self cleaning swirl filter revisited

One of the many people named Anonymous took the time to comment on my self cleaning swirl filter, so I thought Id revisit the topic with some thoughts Ive been having.

For the last few weeks Ive been thinking of getting some more fish.

And Ive also been thinking about developing the self cleaning swirl filter a little more.

My original design was to tap off a small amount of clean water for NFT tubes employing the self cleaning filter to keep the roots from collecting solids and blocking the NFT tubes. In the end I got around that by just taking my water from the sump, where there were no solids, but that required a better pump to get water to the top of the tubes. .


If this were ever to be implemented as a system to remove solids from a system rather than returning them to the grow beds it would need some adjustment.

Its easy to set up a container so that it is right at the point of tripping a siphon, but will never actually get there unless someone suddenly dumps water into it. With this in mind, one option I thought of  when I was playing with this idea, was to use a deer scarer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishi-odoshi

Set a dripping tap, so it slowly filled a deer scarer. The deer scarer should tip only once or twice a day, and should dump the same amount of water that the self cleaning swirl filter takes from the system each time its triggered.

Im going to build a deer scarer, and see how it works, then see if it really would take care of dosing the self cleaning filter with the correct amount of water to make it do its thing.

You can see my previous work on my self cleaning swirl filter here.

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Photography Maybe bee

I was playing around with my new, home made macro lens, and found this interesting little dead thing to act as a model.

I thinks its maybe a bee.

Or a wasp.

Or an ant.

I think its a bee.

If its a bee, its probably a native Australian bee. Perhaps a Megachile or "Resin bee".

Or a wasp.

Either way, this is what you find if you mentally mark out a square foot of ground on my lawn, and search it as if it were a crime scene.

A very interesting looking little critter.

Its perhaps 5mm long.

The background is a dark woollen glove

Dark subject against a dark background.

Still learning.















120 Things in 20 years wonders how its going to get a bee to wink in a planned portrait when bees dont have eyelids.

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Making smoked foods Tin can smoker

As far as I can tell, everything worth eating, is worth smoke curing.


As a result of a gift from my other mother, we have one of these in our yard.

Shiny!

And poorly photographed!

"Poorly photographed", is a new style Im exploring a bit in this post.





A gas BBQ is all well and good, but as part of the move to gas, we tend to miss out a bit on the flavours that woodsmoke can provide.

Gas = good

Wood = good

Gas AND woodsmoke = amazing!

An extremely important part of this "Thing" is the humble tin can. I say humble, but Im not really sure if a tin can actually does humble.

Im guessing a tin can mostly does tin can things.

Lurking springs to mind.

Shinning might also rate a mention if its a fresh one.

Mines a fresh one.


Shine can, shine.

Lurk can, lurk.

A tin can can also have holes punched through it with an old mini-screwdriver, but Ill get to that a bit later.

For now, Ill introduce the backbone and or possibly un-necessary briquette.

Backbone, because it provides the heat that drives the smoke.

Un-necessary, because it might not.

I cant really tell what contribution this stuff made, other than it was used, and the result was good.

I also dont know enough to endorse any product you might see in this post, so take everything I say as you always should, with a grain of bacon salt.




Now is probably a good time to say that none of this stuff is my idea or anything (except perhaps using a screwdriver as a drill, and then enlarging those screwdriver holes with a bigger, thicker screwdriver ) but rather, its a collage of everything Ive read over the last few days, and the implementation is based on trial and error in real time, bizarre ritual, and risking tonights meal.

DO try this at home. (except maybe the bit about ramming a screwdriver through a can of burning coal)

Anyway...

The briquettes look like this up close.

They look like brown coal, but I suspect they are made of more recent trees. Checking...

Ok... well it seems the packaging reads "Not suitable for barbecues. Probably something I should have read before buying it. Perhaps it shouldnt have been displayed in the BBQ section of the hardware I bought them from.

You live and learn.


I hope this isnt what made todays smoking such a success.

I have no idea whats in these things, so please dont use them unless you find out, and then please tell me what they are made off so I can seek whatever medical attention I might need.

Im sure Ill be walrus.

Anyway...

other things to show and tell, include hickory chips.

I ended up using around two cups for my two chicken thighs, but Im guessing it would make no difference how much stuff I put in the BBQ. It would still take around two cups.

Two chicken thighs in a BBQ is a total waste of energy, but I didnt want to waste too much food if it all went wrong.

I also bought some fire starter cube things to get the briquettes that are unsuitable for BBQs alight.

I have no idea what these things are made of.









If I ran an unscrupulous country that wanted to get rid of its toxic waste, Id just shape it into things and export it as products.

Outdoor furniture and so forth.

So, I smacked a few holes in my tin can with a rusty old mini-screwdriver thing.

I knew it was sharp enough for this task, because every other time I use it for a task it wasnt designed for, I manage to gain a body piercing of a part of my hand that was never designed to receive such a thing.

This time I hurt nothing but the can, because it turns out cans are pretty thin.

Confident stabs make smaller dents in the can, and cleaner holes.

Stab confidently.

I punched two extra holes at the top to thread a loop of wire through to act as a handle.

Probably not required, but I did use it at the end of the day to pick it up and put it under a water tap to make sure any leftover fire was safely out.

So... add a handle if you have a handy coat hanger or length of wire.

Pliers also work as a handle.

It took way too long to get the briquettes going because there was clearly not enough oxygen getting to them.

The flames were there, but they started at the top where they met fresh air rather than at the fuel where a fire should be.

So I "extra safely" punched a few more holes through, then made them bigger with a thicker screwdriver.

It turns out its probably not a good idea to do this when its burning, but it worked out fine in the end.

The fire took on a much more healthy glow, and I held back on adding too many holes to the lid, because I figured I might need to damp the fire down a bit because I want smoke not flame.

You cant really see it in the pic, but the flame actually looked like it was coming in through the holes at the bottom. Like an inside out gas burner. Like the fuel was gasing, and the flames did what they did to seek the oxygen.

Interesting. And a pretty handy tin can stove.


To be honest, I dont really understand why this was burning like I wanted it to when I wanted to get it alight, but then settled down to what I wanted it to do when I wanted smoke.

All the photos above include flame from the fire starter things, so perhaps its just a case of them burning with a bit more gusto than the heat beads and wood chips.

Or it could be the water soaking of the wood chips.

Did I mention that? The wood chips were soaked in water boiling water for a few minutes before being added to the tin can with the glowing briquettes.

I suspect they dry out before they start to smoke, so perhaps its just to stage the wood chips so they dont all go up in flames at the same time. As far as I can tell, it should be possible to either make them burn in stages by wetting them, creating only a small section at any one time thats dry enough and hot enough to start smoking, OR restrict the airflow and choke them to whatever combustion rate you want.

Perhaps the water soaking has some other reason. Ill let you know if it turns out to be important.

Smoke!

Lots of it.

I didnt push the number of holes, because I didnt want it to go to flame, but I got the feeling I could have made as much smoke as I wanted simply by adding more.






There was quite a bit of slack space between it burning , and it smoking. If I put out the fire, it would take a lot of blowing at the holes around the bottom to get it to flame again. (I only did this to test how forgiving it was) The result was that it seemed to prefer to make smoke rather than fire unless it was really coaxed into flame, and even then it settled back to making smoke.

Clearly it knew its designated task.

Ill play a bit more later, and theres always the lid to damp it down if needs be.  I might even add a second lid so I can turn it like a tap to adjust it. ie, a big hole in each lid, and overlap them so you can change the size of the hole.

I was concentrating on air in, but controlling air (or exhaust) out does the same thing. It probably doesnt matter which one you control, the result is, if you restrict the airflow over the coals, you restrict the burn, and control the smoke.

After an hour or so of smoke that was sometimes on and sometimes off, depending on what I was trying at the time, the result looked like this.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed.

I thought it would have a lot more smoke colour to it. Some of that colour on the bacon was there in the beginning. And this photo is actually a little flattering as far as colour goes.



But it was getting late so I lit the BBQ and brought the bacon wrapped, blue cheese, and tomato stuffed chicken thigh parcels (my best tying effort to date in my own opinion) up to an internal temperature of 75c.

Apparently I missed a step called brining. Ill let you know if it turns out to have been important. I think it involves marinating your food in a salt water solution before smoking like I had to do with the home made cheese "thing".

But the result was truly amazing!

Totally worthwhile.

My big fear is that this will be one of those beginners luck things, and that I will now spend the rest of my life trying to duplicate it.

Hopefully, and perhaps more likely, is that this is just the beginning of what is possible with smoking.

I hope so.

The result makes for a terrible photo, because for some reason, I went for an autopsy/science  look rather than a food look.

Never take a food cross section photo straight on.

Originally I was a bit suspicious of the pink, thinking it might be under cooked, but my digital meat thermometer said it was cooked, and it turned out the thermometer knows its stuff.


The chicken looked a bit like good bacon.

The bacon wrapped around the chicken looked like what I now call good chicken.

If anything it was actually a little over-done, but the brining step might add a bit of moisture to the final product that might counteract that.

Who knows. I cant wait to find out.

The only thing to do is learn a bit more, and do it again.

I rate this experiment with a tin can smoker a total success, and if youve ever thought about smoke curing stuff, I thoroughly recommend giving it a go.

Insanely delicious.

I hope the in(common)-laws dont read this and want their BBQ back.




120 Things in 20 years - Smoke cured stuff really rocks, and you can knock up a tin can smoker in only a few minutes.

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Photography Seeing whats inside a canon auto focus lens

Opening up my old camera in an attempt to fix a stuck lens didnt end well, but it did make me want to open other stuff.

A mouldy $5 canon EF 35-80mm zoom seems like a good candidate.

I actually made it work better than it did when I started.

Thats officially a successful repair.

We dont see many of those around here.

Odd feeling.

It turns out I wasnt being all that original when I used a lens cleaning cloth to make my macro lens hack light tight. It seems canon does something similar with a rubber band.

I attacked the rubber grip of the lens by lifting it up with a small flat head screwdriver, and sliding it up to reveal the three screws that control the zoom function.




Once that was done, the lens started falling apart. All it took was finding where the screws were in the first place. All the places I was told to start by the Internet were all false leads. Im guessing things like lenses are made by the lowest bidder at the time, so these things probably change design all the time.

The only real stumbling block was this very fragile looking plug.

Luckily I had uncounted them when I pulled apart my point and shoot canon digital, and discovered they werent really all that fragile.

I covered it with a folded bit of paper so the pliers wouldnt scratch the circuit off and pulled.




I also tried to avoid touching anything that looked like it might be copper. I have a feeling that touching stuff might lead to corrosion.

Probably just being paranoid, but it wasnt any really effort to avoid it. I should buy some cotton gloves for this kind of thing.

The little plug looks like this when its unplugged.

Robots are probably better at putting stuff like this back together, so I took a lot of photos as I was unbuilding it, so that I might have a chance of putting it back together.

Thats a tip.

Take lots of photos of things as you pull them apart.

One part that was really fragile was this little bit of kit.

Its like a switch that drags its contacts along a curved section of circuit board tracks so that the contacts keep in contact when you rotate the lens to zoom.

Or perhaps they adjust the aperture as you zoom, as Ive noticed the available aperture range changes from one extreme of zoom to the other.


Who knows what its really for, but I bent it convincingly out of shape when I was putting the thing back together.

I managed to fix it, but two of the pins will never be the same again.

This is the rear element. (the bit you can see a lens in on the left)

Its a cluster of ... three I think it was... lenses (two at least, but I think one was made of two), that I think also contains the aperture control.

The aperture control stuff must be in there, because there was nothing else with electronics in the lens.

I think this is me taking apart the lens that was really two lenses.

This things all had mould, but the other side of the one you can see in this pic had the most.

This is what I decided was the aperture bit.

I hope this isnt too technical for the reader.

Is bit even a word in this context...

Anyway, the remarkable thing is, after wiping down all the lenses with a lens cloth, it was actually an improvement.

Thats the before and after shots with this lens.

Most of the milkiness is gone, but there is still a bit of mould on the front bunch of lenses, but I think I might hack them off and convert this thing to a macro lens.



Ive been reading up on lenses, and how to hack bits off lenses that you dont want, and turn them into lenses that you do want.

Anyway, not a bad outcome for a $5, brand name, auto focus, zoom lens.

I cant wait to cut bits off it.




120 things in 20 years - Where you will still find someone who thinks a lens doing its auto focus thing is excitingly like having a robot. You also might find someone interested in photography trying to open a lens to see if there really is a man inside who does the focusing. (theres not by the way)

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