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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insert female hygiene product

its 3:01 Am...

well this blog didnt really have a name...its a ladys blog though...well not really. I guess everyone can tune in.

So the first female hygiene product is douche bag. Not that I would ever use one of these scary things...theyre bad for you so you shouldnt use them either (or if a guy, your future girlfriend, daughter, mother...)

Its about a guy. A few years ago....oh I dunno lets say...2007...cause Im pretty sure it was 2007 one of my old best friends got with this guy. They were completely ? and living happily ever after from an outsider point of view.

Mind you its around 3:00 AM

He told her not too long ago that he just doesnt feel ready for a relationship.

-_-

Its been three years and it took him that long??

I know from being there and having my ? completely shattered too...except that was after four years. The longer it has been, the worse it feels.

*sigh*

I remember around the 2nd month I was with Adam I asked what he wanted. I knew what I wanted from him but dared not to step back on grounds and have my heart smashed all over again. After all, it had only been a year and a half prior to that conversation that my wonderful ex fiancé left me for his vocal teacher (and what made me feel worse was he told me he wanted to learn to sing so I was the one that suggesting getting vocal lessons in the first place)

But yeah...I asked in fear of getting close just to be hurt again. And honestly I think anyone that has ever been in love and then suffered from an extremely broken heart has that fear.

I never take my relationships for granted...which is sometimes an issue I believe. Its the fact that I listen to those little things. When Adam says "oh thank you so much for putting my plate away," it means more to me than having some famous person calling me beautiful. So naturally when he says some more negative things, my brain takes the information and digests it...seriously. Of course this isnt the same as being called fat or anything. I digest that but I know I can change it and WILL. Its when I feel like I try my hardest and the only teachings I get are negative feedback do I wrap myself around the anxiety pole. So take note of this Adam...if youre reading.

Next female hygiene product...as well as the one after, are actual talks of female hygiene products. So ya men can either sit and ponder or look away. This blog is being posted BECAUSE it is the third hour of the day and I cannot seem to sleep.

So first for some negativity.

In high school, I used a lovely product called the Diva cup. It is a menstrual cup. Well Im bad at defining those so here. An accurate definition from Wikipedia.

A menstrual cup is a type of cup or barrier worn inside the vagina during menstruation to collect menstrual fluid.

Yup. Sounds gross? Well its basically like a tampon but doesnt absorb, making it healthier for your vaginal system. On top of that, it can be kept in for 12 hours. They can hold a lot. I mean...I have NEVER filled one except this one time during heavy flow when I slept for almost 16 hours.

oops

Its not the only brand. There are others such as Moon Cup and The Keeper. I think I honestly chose Diva Cup cause....its prettier

XD

I started using them cause I had a bad reaction to tampons but wanted something comfortable to go horse riding with. and well...tada! I had mine for a good three years till I dropped it in the high school bathroom. Like a smart girl I had a back up, but was still major depressed. I mean I was just visiting and thats what I get??? Whats my point of posting this? Well here is the negative part. I have my lovely IUD and apparently there can be complications with using the cup and IUD together, typically with pulling the IUD string which can cause all sorts of problems. My string actually curls....sometimes. Its that sometimes part that gets me.

*tears*

Well I decided that if I move out again, there is no way I want to spend money on buying pads again. I was waaay too spoiled with a reusable product. So I decided to check out cloth pads. $200 for a product that typically lasts five years (well actually...thats the price for six night time hemps and 15 regular organic hemps). We have a winner. Not only is it cheaper for me (which is important when youd be living paycheck to paycheck) but its...cheaper! On top of that I can adjust how much it absorbs. YAY.

ok...end blog

3:35 AM...Im going home and sleeping in my 40*f house...to clean when the sun gets up

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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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day of double takes

Was yesterday. Anyway so it stared off with me talking to my ex, Chris, who is the coolest ex in the entire planet. I say this because most people change after you date em. Really were friends all over again. No awkwardness, no hate, no bullshit. So we had an actual conversation for the first time in years. Was pretty spiffy catching up.

Then I went on my way home. Mom stopped off at Wal Mart where I saw an old lady cruising through on a pocket bike.

-_-

I either hallucinated something incredible or there were some stupid people at the door. Whatever.

so yeah that was crazy.

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