Hanimex and the lens “Toddler”
Placing distortion inducing optical elements in front of expensive cameras is all the rage these days and all the hipsters are doing it so I didn’t want to miss out. There is a line of products called Lensbaby that allows for selective focus by essentially tilting the front element. My setup is a little different I’ve taken a wide angle adapter intended for video and mounted it on the front of the lens. This isn’t so much selective focus as the worlds worst astigmatism. The camera I’ve victimized is an interesting one. It’s actually a point and shoot SLR with a prism finder and a fixed 41mm 1:2.8 lens. Take a moment to think about that as I wind the next frame with the thumb wheel. Yes SLR, Yes thumb-wheel, fixed lens, No the mirror actually performs as the shutter, so many questions. The mirror/shutter has a single speed and you select the aperature via a ring around the base of the lens. To use the meter you press the little green button on the top plate near the shutter button. Three LED’s let you know if you are under, over exposed or just right(ish).
Back to the wide angle adapter it has a magnification of .55 which multiplied against the lenses 41mm yields 22.5mm of wide-angle badness. Of course I didn’t use it for all the shots see if you can tell which ones.
