DIY Anamorphic MF Lens

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I think one of the most difficult part of making giant lens , to find a giant piece of glass.
Optical glasses which sold my different distributors or glass lathing houses sold by thinking small diameter , thin lenses.

I think I found something interesting. Float glass is an architectural glass which is designed to cover large areas without the casting errors or waves on glass.

They are the cheapest glass you can buy for geting optical flat surfaces and widely available from every window glass cutting companies.

My main research is stacking may be 10 pieces of these glass pieces with optical glass adhesive and than ordering two 90 degrees opposite water jet cut cylindrical lenses out of stacked glasses.

Than put a spherical lens as the last element and your anamorphic lens is ready.

What do you think ?

And it is possible to stack different glasses and obtain a better engineering result.

Glatzel have a very thick very deep lens.

I am thinking this design from cylindrical lenses.

Mustafa Umut Sarac

Istanbul

 

[holmburgers]

If they refractive indexes of the adhesive and the glass match, it should theoretically be possible.. right? But I know nothing about optics really. Is water jet cutting affordable?

An anamorphic lens and a corresponding anamorphic enlarging lens would be a very powerful darkroom tool.

And the famous "anamorphic lens flare" of Hollywood would be awesome to have! I watched Alien this weekend and that movie has so much flare it's not even funny.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I watched Alien at vhs times. Did you watch the first one which aliens enter the bodies and than leave it ?
These adhesives are common tool for lens repair people and they use them at many different glasses. May be it is too thin to effect.
Water jet cutting is the most affordable cutting tool with laser and plasma cutting.
When you compare cutting 15 cms thick glass with cnc lathe , you pay nothing , More the thickness , more profit for cutting. But I saw the non flat cutting results also. It flares little bit because it is finally liquid.
So less the thickness , more precision is the another rule also.
So experience with your material will teach you.
This glass material is costing nothing but I afraid from the green cheap thick glass appereance also.
I am member to Konvas group and they use LOMO , EKRAN square front anamorphic glasses with Canon or RED cameras and I watched many experiments day or night , even directing spot light to lens and I did not see any abnormality.
May be they used famous hollywood prism based lenses and flare comes from it.
I read many things about optics and finally found that best way to design a lens is to prepare it for computer based on hand calculation.
And if it is possible to use aspherical surfaces , it is wiser.
I think casting a polymer block and than cutting with jet and than prepare a mold and pour optical plastic is the one of the best technology. But it is faraway more expensive and plastic dont sit inside the mold when it is sitting in the container in liquid form. It warps , .. and many things.

Umut

 

[holmburgers]

yes, that alien!