Hose Baby

 Hose Baby.

Just before Christmas I bought off eBay and old Olympus 50mm f/1.8 lens with the idea of creating a DIY Lens Baby. I originally got the idea from my friend Ann who coined the expression 'Hose Baby'. She used a vintage lens (I think hers was an Olympus too) and a short length of  flexible plastic tube. Coincidentally in an issue of PhotoPlus for Canon users a guy did the same with the innertube of a mountain bike. 

I finally got round to giving it a go today. I already had an inner tube and some long Ty-Raps. I decided to use the Olympus OMD E-M10 mkii my wife gave me in exchange for my OMD E-M1 mkii when I switched to Canon Mirrorless and I have borrowed her 10mm extension tube to connect to the camera. 

I cut a length  of the cycle tube, split it  length ways  and wrapped it around the back of the Olympus 50mm lens making sure the Ty-Rap, when tightened,  activated the depth of field stop down switch on the side of the lens. This means I can adjust the aperture ring to use different apertures. Having said that it looks like a lot of people using these DIY Lenses shoot wide open to get the beautiful soft feel to the final image. 

I connected the extension tube using the same method to the other end  of the cycle tube giving about 50mm extension. I have only had a quick play today and it should be fun to play with. 

There is quite a bit of info on the web / YouTube on doing this. Most of them are using legacy lenses and quite few use the Russian Helios 50mm f/2.