A New Digital Life for a Kodak Pony 828 Camera Lens

Found an old Kodak 828 film camera at a thrift store (what we used to call an antique store) for 7USD. Decided to affix it to my DSLR for a new view on photos. 

I disassembled the lens and shutter assembly from the Kodak by basically undoing just a couple of screws. The Anaston 51mm, f/4.5 lens and its shutter must have been a complete unit applied late in the original manufacturing process.

To mount the lens to my ancient Canon T3i DSLR, I found and old plastic Canon EF series body cap and drilled two holes into it. The first hole was made large enough to fit the the rear lens assembly and the other hole, a much smaller one, was to make room for a small protruding port on the camera's former on-body shutter release mechanism linkage. 

I set the lens to "B", released the shutter and then unceremoniously screwed in a bolt (a left-over part from many computer repairs) into the auxiliary release port. This keeps the shutter wide open permanently. It would have been easier if the shutter had a "T", or timed, speed setting.  

As the Anaston was designed for a smaller, thinner film camera, so there's no way this lens will focus on infinity with the Canon and it's large mirror box configuration. No big deal. I can settle for playing with near macro lens shooting all day long.

Once surgery was complete, I did some test imaging with the old Kodak lens compared with my modern autofocus Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens. 

IMAGE RESULTS

LOL, no comparison. OK, once you fiddle with the wobbly focus ring on the Anaston and position everything JUST RIGHT, the 51mm did not do as bad as some crappy LOMO camera or 110 Instamatic.