My home made adapter tube

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Crater Eddie
Posts: 1858
Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 4:39 pm
Location: Illinois USA

My home made adapter tube

#1 Post by Crater Eddie » Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:52 am

Forum member wmodavis wanted a few details on the adapter tube I made to mount my camera to my Olympus BH-2, so here we go. Its really pretty simple.



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Here you see the whole thing put together.


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I found a 1 1/2" x 8" gray pvc pipe nipple in the junkbox. You can see it still has some tape on it, I'll have to clean it up someday.


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The inside diameter of this pipe just happened to fit the photo eyepiece mounting flange perfectly. So, I cut off the threaded sections and squared up the cut ends on the lathe. PVC is very easy to machine, I use it for lots of things.


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I happened to have an adapter for the Olympus E-P1 camera already, to match it to the T1 adapter on my LOMO scope. The adapter is threaded, but I didn't think the PVC would take that fine pitch thread very well, so I just turned it down for a snug slip fit. I had to eyeball the distance from the end of the installed adapter to the imaging sensor, and cut the PVC pipe to provide 150mm (per the Olympus literature) from the sensor to the photo eyepiece mounting flange. I cut it long and checked for parfocality to the eyepieces, shortened it a bit and checked it again, and over again until I got very close. I stopped a little early, I still have to refocus just a tiny bit to get the camera in focus. I'll trim another 5mm off and check it again, rinse and repeat. No problem if I go a little too far, I can make spacer rings to shim it back up if I have to. If I wanted to get fancy I could get another T1 fitting and put them together and use the mating threaded sections to fine tune the focus. If it gets too fiddly the way it is I might do that.
I just started playing with it on the scope last night, but so far I haven't had any problems with shutter induced vibration.
CE
Olympus BH-2 / BHTU
LOMO BIOLAM L-2-2
LOMO POLAM L-213 / BIOLAM L-211 hybrid
LOMO Multiscope (Biolam)
Cameras: Canon T3i, Olympus E-P1 MFT, Amscope 3mp USB

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wmodavis
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Location: Highlands Ranch, Colorado USA
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Re: My home made adapter tube

#2 Post by wmodavis » Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:09 am

Thanks that helps me visualize much better.
Bill Davis
Olympus BH-2/BHS and BH-2/BHT both with trinoc head.

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rnabholz
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Re: My home made adapter tube

#3 Post by rnabholz » Sun Jul 17, 2016 11:52 am

Nicely done CE!

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75RR
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Re: My home made adapter tube

#4 Post by 75RR » Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:04 pm

If I wanted to get fancy I could get another T1 fitting and put them together and use the mating threaded sections to fine tune the focus. If it gets too fiddly the way it is I might do that.
If you can find the time I think you will find it will be well worth it. There is no such thing as so-so parfocality. ;)
Zeiss Standard WL (somewhat fashion challenged) & Wild M8
Olympus E-P2 (Micro Four Thirds Camera)

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Crater Eddie
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Location: Illinois USA

Re: My home made adapter tube

#5 Post by Crater Eddie » Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:26 pm

wmodavis: You are very welcome, hope you get something out of it.

rnabholz: Most kind sir.

75RR: Yes, you are right of course. It is frustrating to have to constantly check the focus on the camera screen, a threaded section is a must. I thought about using threaded pvc pipe couplers, but they don't turn smoothly enough for me. Its time to dig in the junk box again, see what turns up. I might have another camera adapter that could be re-adapted...

CE
Olympus BH-2 / BHTU
LOMO BIOLAM L-2-2
LOMO POLAM L-213 / BIOLAM L-211 hybrid
LOMO Multiscope (Biolam)
Cameras: Canon T3i, Olympus E-P1 MFT, Amscope 3mp USB

billbillt
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Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2014 10:01 pm

Re: My home made adapter tube

#6 Post by billbillt » Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:07 pm

This is one of the better projects.. Great job..

BillT

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gekko
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Re: My home made adapter tube

#7 Post by gekko » Mon Jul 18, 2016 1:44 am

Beautiful workmanship: very nice indeed.

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Crater Eddie
Posts: 1858
Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 4:39 pm
Location: Illinois USA

Re: My home made adapter tube

#8 Post by Crater Eddie » Wed Jul 20, 2016 3:51 pm

Thanks fellows.
After shaving a few more millimeters off the bottom end of the tube, I finally have the camera parfocal with the eyepieces. I know that I have a certain amount of shutter induced camera shake with this setup, but it works well enough for low power work.
For now.

CE
Olympus BH-2 / BHTU
LOMO BIOLAM L-2-2
LOMO POLAM L-213 / BIOLAM L-211 hybrid
LOMO Multiscope (Biolam)
Cameras: Canon T3i, Olympus E-P1 MFT, Amscope 3mp USB

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vasselle
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Location: France

Re: My home made adapter tube

#9 Post by vasselle » Wed Jul 20, 2016 3:55 pm

Belle réalisation.
Cordialement seb
Microscope Leitz Laborlux k
Boitier EOS 1200D + EOS 1100D

Rodney
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Re: My home made adapter tube

#10 Post by Rodney » Wed Jul 20, 2016 6:18 pm

Those lathes are certainly worth having, I guess if you had all the material you could make all sorts of parts.
Neat Job..

Rodney

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