A very broken lens

Recently my friend Andria was on a job when her lens fell apart. She was a bit shaken obviously. She sent me a message showing the broken lens and asked if it could be repaired. I suggested she bring it to the store for an estimate. For enough money just about anything can be repaired right?

Sadly, the repair cost of the lens simple didn't justify having it repaired. There was just too much damage. So Andria purchased a new lens and donated her broken lens to my project. I was actually quite excited because, despite its condition, this is one of Canon's best lenses. I was confident that I could manage to capture images with it and suspected they'd be quite sharp. 

I noticed the focus ring would still drive the elements of the lens. I felt this was good news but since proper alignment of the housing could no longer be achieved I really had no way to know exactly where the lens would be focused. With two exceptions. I could turn it to its stops at either end and know it was either focused at infinity or its minimum focus distance. Since I do far more close up work than astro photography that decision was an easy one. I was pleasantly surprised to learn this lens, at minimum focus, gets you to less than a foot away from your subject. For any macro photographer, that's exciting. So, I got to work setting the focus and did an incredibly professional job of taping it back together with, of course, gaffers tape. Look... good as new.

Now I just needed to figure out how to make it work. On a fully functioning Canon body the lens produces an error message immediately upon firing the shutter. That's fully understandable. When it came apart critical parts were damaged including thin ribbon cables that carry the electronic signals. However, apparently enough electronics remain that its recognized by my 7D that bricks when attached to a Canon lens. Hmmm. That was a temporary dilemma but I quickly arrived at the answer. Attach it to the camera enough to keep it from falling off (I don't want it to get broken after all) but if I don't turn it quite all the way to its lock position, the contacts aren't touching and it works great. 

With a working body/lens combo I just needed something to shoot. The opportunity arose when I happened upon a can of buttons that also included a couple old keys. They looked to be the perfect subjects for my newest experiment. 

I wasn't disappointed. I'll definitely be doing more macro with this combination! 

Thanks Andria!