DLP projection lenses: Has anyone tried to adapt one?

Boris_Akunin · Joined: 22 Aug 2013 Posts: 392 Location: Bremen, Germany

Hi,

I came across this auction:
www.ebay.de/itm/Minolta-Digital-Projection-DLP-Objektiv-SXGA-Zoom-1-2-0-2-5-wie-Neu-/141594712434

The lens looks quite impressive, I wonder how much work it would be to adapt a lens like that (and if it's worth the effort).

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

I have adapted a few similar lenses for use on my NEX-3.

Expect a sharp image that is not all that well corrected, a diffuse glow is present that is either spherical aberration, coma or both. There is usually quite significant CA. Distortion is usually extremely well corrected.

The most recent one I adapted was for a Sharp projector and was extremely wide - 8mm, only just and so covered an APS-C sensor with slight vignette in the extreme corners.

Here is a bad sample pic from the 8mm just held in front of my NEX-3, as you can see it vignettes a bit but there is very little distortion for such an extremely wide FOV. Pixel peeping, it is pretty sharp, but that is masked by the glow, fringing and lower micro contrast (I turned up the macro contrast of this image).

If you can get them very cheap, worth a play I think.

ZoneV · Expire: 2011-12-02

I have several digital projection lenses, at least some of them from DLP projectors.
Three of them are "beasts" with hosuing diameters I think up to 17cm.
Two of them are very small, and work as extreme wideangle for a crop camera.
One of my lens is afocal.

I don´t use any of these lenses as regular taking lens.
Not the weight is a problem - I have two lenses with 5kg that I use sometimes - but the image quality / drawing style does not offer someting special for me.

16:9 · Joined: 04 Apr 2014 Posts: 311 Location: UK

Yes - I am jumping on Ian's bandwagon.

First shots coming out of this Panasonic TKGF0127-1 are quite promising. Image circle around 35mm (larger at the longer focal length, naturally), but it's quite light and petite for a digital PJ lens.

We should talk a lot more about coverage . . . this lens was designed for a 0.7" diagonal DLP chip. The new fangled lenses only need to cover today's perversely shrunken silicon, but some of the big old beauties threw much roomier light puddles.

eggplant · Joined: 27 May 2020 Posts: 517

Possibly because they supported shifting (or keystoning as it's termed). I have a very bulbous one that does slightly less than APS-H.