Illuminator thing

[ChrisR]

What a lottery site Ebay can be sometimes.
I saw a lens I fancied.
It ticked some mental "nice to have" boxes,
CF plan, 20x, slwd...

(has anyone noticed my mistake, at this point?)

and it said "Best Offer".

So I made an offer.
Ebay software fell over.
So I phoned ebay (addicts get a special number) to moan. "Terribly sorry don't know when that'll be fixed", said a man a couple of contiments away, "We'll give you a GBP 20 voucher".
That was a chunk off the price so I did a Buy It Now at full price, explaining problem to the vendor.
"Very sorry ", HE said, and didn't charge shipping.

Big box arrived, with a diagram showing "Your lens" arrowed, on the end of a lump of stuff with a wire coming out of the end. In case, presumably, I couldn't find the lens.

ANd here it is:


The lens is an infinity corrected one

The battered white lump, Moritex , s/n 801729, has a semi silvered mirror, or prism, provision for a light, with a hole about 0.25 inch and thumbscrew. FOr what exactly, I have no idea.
There's also a Tube Lens inside, with FL about 120mm. Hopefully someone did his job right and it focusses correctly on the CCD, which screws in the back end.
The plug and socket, and cable, has 12 conductors. I can't find that as a standard.

Can anyone tell me anything more about the light which would have been used, or the camera.?
I should be able to get the black funnel shaped adaptor off, and arrange an SLR in there, somehow. It's slightly fatter than a standard scope tube, at about an inch. Is that a standard?

I WAS going to ask if EPI illumination was any good for macro/3D objects, but Mr Krebs just answered that one

Moreover, with an infinity lens to play with, and a thing for using them, I should be able to answer a few other questions myself.

My lens has its full complement of descriptors on the barrel. If anyone got the pictured one for half the price, well done, did you get the illuminator as well??!

[g4lab]

I don't know how much you paid for that goodie but it looks like a very nice thing. You need to do only two or three things to get that up and running presuming that the interior is in good shape.

1) from the looks of the connection at the top, I would be willing to bet that there was a fiber optic illuminator in the hole above the tapered section and held in place with a set screw. You can find fiber optic illuminators all the time on ebay for hardly any money. Measure the inside diameter of that connection and find a single cable with the same outside diameter plus the requisite illuminator and that part is ready to go.

2) You will want to mechanically mount the unit on a focusing mount of some kind. Adapt it to a macro focusing rack or microscope focuser. (I know,Obvious. )

3) A nice bit of good fortune is that it came with a camera so you know approximately where the devices focal plane is, and you also have a pretty good idea that it has the proper infinity correction optic in the tube throwing the image onto the location of that imaging chip. That means after you get it all set up you can get similar objectives in the same series and use them with this goodie.

What you will want to do is note about where the thing is focusing and make a mechanical adaptation to put the focal place of some other imager in the same place. You will want to size the chip appropriately for the image circle which the unit throws which you can determine by projecting it onto a piece of paper. You will probably want to mount it in front of a DSLR with no intervening optics. The camera that came with it is probably a video unit and you are unlikely to be able to find the matching cable and controller. But it would not be difficult to take that threaded piece and mount it to a T mount that would fit your DSLR perhaps with an intervening piece of alluminum. or black plastic.

How much did that set you back?
Moritex is a Japanese company that services the semiconductor industry if I remember correctly.

Gene