Brian , how did it all begin ?

[dee]

I am intrigued - how did all the lens modifications , especially unsuspecting Sonnars begin ?
As someone who can cross thread a screw just by glancing at it [ dee'spraxia ]
i am fascinated by such ability .
Thanks dee

[Brian Sweeney]

I read this quickly at work, and immediately flashed-back to "Airplane!" where the question "how did this begin" was answered with the age of the dinosaurs. Too Funny.

When I was 6, I started taking most of my toys apart to figure out how they worked. By the time I was 9, I could get them back together again.

I knew that Russian optics were first-rate for a very long time, and just could not believe everything on the Internet proclaiming how bad J-3's were. Things like "If you find a J-3 that works, keep-it- you might never find another one".

So I bought 5 of them and took them apart. Sonnars- I am a Nikon fanatic. Been using a Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.4. Then, fell into a Contax IIIA with CZO, then bought the CZJ 5cm F1.5 for my Contax and found it needed to be shimmed and put it on a J-3 focus mount instead.


AND


"In the beginning, everyone used SONNARS because they were the fastest and sharpest lenses around. But then, Zeiss created COATINGS and the Planars inherited the Earth!"

[dee]

and the rest is his story ...

[paulfish4570]

Well?
What's next?

[Brian Sweeney]

What next Brian?

Same as always, tomorrow we will Take over the World! I'm thinking post-war Exacta mount Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm F3.5 Tessars hacked into LTM using I-61 mounts.

[wlewisiii]

Drool. :) Seriously.

Wiliam

[Brian Sweeney]

"Russian It" - that could really catch on. I'm a computer engineer, working in the Optical Sciences Division. I've hooked multiple LASERS up to my computer, and controlled them using .... FORTRAN/Assembly running on DOS. Still do.

Always tell people, "The worst thing that can happen is the computer catches on fire". "But that has only happened twice."

[Brian Sweeney]

Favorite LASER story, one of the engineers that worked for me, started in the 60s, cleaning out an old cabinet. Bob pulled out something with glass tubes, rubber hoses, some wires dangling-
I asked, "Bob, what is that". Got back "It's a LASER".

I stated "Looks kind of crude"...
"Well, it was a Science Fair project for 7th (or 6th, I forget) grade.I did get it to LASE."

[Contarama]

My wife is a physics nirvana person...this is all I hear about every night. She wants to do research with some crazy scope the school has so they can observe atoms or something. She had a blow torch the other day using it to heat up a nickel affixed to a magnet fixed into a vise for some rudimentary physics experiment she was doing for school. She talks about laser this and laser that too and deep space observation...

The minute she asks to see one of my camera lenses I'm going to pack them up and hide them in the trunk of my car. lol

[Brian Sweeney]

My two- An SR-56 Calculator that I uncovered hidden opcodes by deleting portions of instructions in memory. One of them was the "Shoot Fire Through the Paper on the Thermal Printer Instruction".

And the other- was a $120K FPS-120b "Attached Array Processor", hanging off a Vax 11/780. Apparently on the 4th day of of doing some serious image process on SPOT data I overloaded the Power Supplies. It was all ECL Logic. The Halon system fired, so the computer room was safe.