Olympus IS 3000 project

[David Mitchell]

Hi all,

I have just aquired an Olympus IS 3000 35mm camera for 299 pennies, this is due to the fact that there is damage to the lens and apparently the shutter won't fire.

I bought it anyhow as a project, its a 35mm SLR but with a fixed zoom lens, its basically a high end film bridge camera,

Here are some specs on it:

Olympus IS 3000 Specifications

It shoots up to 1/2000s and has progam, aperture, shutter and manual modes, its got 3 sorts of metering, auto film rewind, and loads of other settings I havn't found yet lol

Hopefully the connectors on the lens are just 1 way, and the camera doesn't notice that there isn't a lens attached - hopefully lol.

I am planning to fit my own lens to it - or indeed just fit a Nikon/M42 mount to it and attach a lens, anyhow here are some photos of how it was and the strip down to check the damage.

Hmm this isn't good

From element off (undamaged) - you can get a 300mm adaptor for this camera, I think its had this front element removed and its then been dropped - lens give focus at about 50mm when checking on another camera.

Damaged element removed - very heavy!

Now to remove the fixed lens

Booom!

Held on with 4 very tight screws - I have a feeling that someone has tried something before as 1 was missing

Camera body - mint

3 connectors removed (3 screws holding the ribbon onto the board.

Focusing element has been knocked off the rails and damaged - a LOT of motors inside!

Ready for a new lens

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Boom!!! Looking good!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Wow. I've never seen inside a camera before. Quite an eye opener. Thanks for showing us your work.

 

[David Mitchell]

Wow. I've never seen inside a camera before. Quite an eye opener. Thanks for showing us your work.

Its more of a case of 'hmm well this screw is holding this bit in' lol you can see how crammed with technology an early 90s camera had. The majority of the grip is made up of the capacitor for the flash lol.

Next step is to get some batteries (probably cost more than the camera) and check to see what works.

The rear LCD is attached to the rear film door lol

 

[Dan Cattermole]

I might just take a camera apart after seeing this?!
I don't see any disclaimers?? Only joking

 

[Hamish Gill]

He's off his his head this guy int he ...

 

[David Mitchell]

I figured that the camera didn't work in its current state but it was only the lens that had an issue and there must be some way to be able to remove it. It only cost me £3 so was worth a try, i'm pretty sure I already have my money back as some of the lens elements are mint and perfect which I can probably reuse for the project. The actual mechanism seems perfect so its just a case of adding on a different lens - for £3 I wasn't too worried if something broke so it was worth a go.

The plan is to perhaps reuse as many of the elements as I can, its only that front element thats damaged and the internal zoom element that has come off its runners and snapped the mount but the glass is good. I am thinking about doing something like set of bellows attached to the front, or indeed make a barrel lens and attach that. The very front element seems to focus at 50mm and gives a soft but much clearer image than those stacked macro rings I had a go and using for a lens.

I will post up some photos tonight or how the elements I have work, I will also try and take a photo inside the lens barrel to show you how many motors are actually in there lol

 

[Pete Askew]

Interesting project David. Thanks.

 

[David Mitchell]

Interesting project David. Thanks.

Thanks Pete, I just wanted to have a go and this seemed ideal, hopefully the camera will still be ok to function without the lens but might be able to disassemble the lens and reconnect parts if it thinks its missing - unsure if the lens acts like a cpu lens or not.

If anyone has any ideas let me know and I will give them a go - thinking perhaps a barrel lens but have 2 sleeves, an inner one fitted to the camera body and the outer one fitted to the lens, then I could cut a slot in the base bit of plastic along the lens so that I can attach a manual focus handle under the camera.

 

[David Mitchell]

Ok I have now got into the lens and found out whats what, the good news is that everything seems to be good internally apart from the damaged mount for the zoom part of the lens and the front element.

Outer barrel, innter plastic and zoom lens assembly - you can see how the lens goes up and down on the spiral.

Zoom assembly apart with the aperture setup free and working

Internals of the zoom assembly with its many many small motors

Here is where things slide back and forth on (the aperture control and the rear element)

Here is what I wasn't expecting which I am SO happy is ok, its the electronically controlled aperture, there is an extra optic on there as well which has a focal lengh of about 20mm

Here it is wide open

The small motor moves the blades in

Fully closed

Here are some parts I will be reusing, I was thinking about using some pipe or something to make a barrel lens, but then thought...wait I have a barrel with a screw thread..

Barrel lens

Here are all the parts that are usable

Not sure if you can see this but here is the assembly of how the lens will be, will probably need to cut down the barrels a bit as I don't have the front element to get the same focal lengh

 

[Pete Askew]

Looking good. I guess you can make a dummy lens up and see where it focuses etc.

 

[David Mitchell]

Yeah I have just done that, the main lens on the front needs to have its barrel shortened, however the smaller optic with the aperture blades errrm...well I got almost perfect focus with it running very close to the mirror, its a very wide angle lens - I think its ment to work with the central floating zoom lens to get proper focus.

I have taken some photos with it on my D3100 using the lenses, I will post them up in a sec

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Wow!! Some project there!!! wow!

 

[David Mitchell]

Right here we go,

Please note that the lens has been held in front of the camera with no barrel which causes a HUGE light leak getting in which causes all sorts of things to happen. Please also note there are hand held both the camera and the lens on a slow shutter speed, I have corrected the exposure slightly in lightroom

Shot with the larger front element - guessing focal lengh of about 50mm meaning this is shot at F1 lol

And here is the smaller optic, with the aperture blades on, this is shot wide open but this is probably about 20mm focal lengh.

Move closer

Move slightly further away

Please also note that this is on my D3100, so has a crop factor of 1.5x

I am now going to see if I can hand hold the lens in the IS-3000 to check where the barrel needs to be.

 

[David Mitchell]

It seems that the smaller lens fits quite well, needs to be raised about 1-2mm away from the mount to get focus, but I could sort that out.

Here are some alternative lens setups,

Nikon 28mm (pre AI) - needs to be slightly closer but can't due to part sticking out at the back

Cosina 55mm F1.4, it too large to fit but about the right distance away

And then we have a real possiblilty, this is my Helios 44, 44mm M42 mount, it also needs to be about 1-2mm away from the mirror box and thats taking into account the rear part of the lens that sticks out, its also small enough to fit inside the OEM setup, I could add an M42 mount upside down to have the aperture and focus marks on the bottom.