Len's Experiments

In the making things difficult for no apparent reason department., I have recently been trying to take photographs with my Canon XT with an old overhead projector lens I found in a box of old stuff from college. This lens has a focal length of 15 inches (around 381 mm) and is has a diameter of about 3 inches. There is no aperture. I built a long box out of foam core and used a mounting ring for a telescope to attach this lens to the XT. I still need to refine this apparatus (actually, I am thinking about rebuilding it out of PVC pipe), but this past weekend I was able to take some of the first pictures with the lens. Part of the appeal of using this lens is trying to use very narrow depth of field in an interesting way. I recommend you view the full size version to really see the imperfections and narrow depth of field of this lens.

What kind of struck me about this photo is that it was not until I posted it to flickr and named it 38 did I think about how I am 38 (for at least the next month or so) and how this photo shows me approaching the big 40. Funny.

38