Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Introducing the Quirk

Yes it’s uniQue.  I’ve taken what I’ve learned from building my own K-mount lenses and am applying it to the Q-mount.  In fact this is the main reason I bought the Pentax Q so that I could build tiny little lenses and ultimately have a whole bag of them or pockets which ever.  The primary optical element of the lens is a coated convex lens of about 12mm focal length.  It once comprised part of the optical system of either a video camera or a super zoom (I have Quite a few lens elements of indeterminate lineage).   For mounting it on the camera I am using an Q to C-mount adapter that I have taken apart.  To improve the image Quality a little I also have created a fixed mechanical aperture that stops the lens down from f2.0 to f4.5.  The focus is technically set to 30cm but can be adjusted by sQueezing the front of the lens, I know that sound odd but it allows for amazingly smooth focus during video recording.  As you can see the lens is incredibly small even when compared to the diminutive SMC Pentax 1:1.9 8.5mm AL[IF]

With the lens mounted the camera can easily be slipped into a pocket and remains protected, much like a body cap would.

Looking at the sample images you might wonder if I also used the blur control feature of the Pentax Q but I did not.  Any distortion of the image is done entirely by the optics. I have done some levels and colour adjustments in Lightroom.  There are commercial products for larger sensor mount cameras that generate similar distortions but nothing that I am aware of for the Q yet.