DIY ULF Lenses - 3D printing resin, epoxy casting or sand casting?

[Qeb]

Greetings everyone,

I hope all are well.
Thank you in advance for reading this.

This post is regarding home made resin/epoxy/plastic lenses (elements and housing).
My dream is to shoot ultralarge format/mammoth format portraits in the future.

My obvious inspirations are, Richard Learoyd and Ian Ruhter.
For instant film shooters that inspire me, I would say I really like work by
Elsa Dorfman, Cathleen Naundorf and Joyce Tenneson.

This past week, I've been researching home made lenses.
There seems to be a few ways to do this.

1. SLA 3D printing with liquid resin
2. plastic resin casting
3. casting sand/glass
4. construction from a lathe or cnc mill

Susan Burnstine is very inspiring in regards to diy lenses.
But one of the driving forces besides auteurism (I think that's the word),
is that, mammoth format lenses are just way too expensive and rare.


Has anyone tried 3d printing or resin/epoxy cast camera lenses?


I'm leaning towards 3d printing or resin casting, but each has incredible challenges.
3D printing, would cost a lot for due SLA printers and resin being so expensive.
And with epoxy casting, it's really hard with out an existing glass element to make a mold from.

Also, I have no clue which lens design would be the easiest to diy but still have relatively acceptable image quality.

I think both Lomography and Holga make plastic lenses, but they are probably injection molded, which has it's challenges also.



Sorry, if this has been discussed on the forum already, I didn't find any good detailed threads.

But, if people are interested in collaborating on experimenting with diy 3d printed or epoxy cast lenses, I would definitely be interested in teaming up.
I'm not rich, but I would try to support anyone who wants to play with this project idea.


Thanks so much for reading this!
Take care and be well

Best regards,
Kevin H. (Toronto, Canada)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here are some links for others who might be interested in diy lenses:


- 3d Printing

A peer reviewed paper on 3d printing lenses
https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.c...0405&id=422075


https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0327094013.htm

https://formlabs.com/blog/creating-c...eolithography/





-Casting Epoxy Lenses

https://hackaday.com/2021/12/09/the-...es-from-epoxy/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN9tHJXXlKs

https://petapixel.com/2021/07/16/pho...lds-and-epoxy/

https://www.diyphotography.net/cloni...d-epoxy-resin/

https://medium.com/jaycon-systems/op...g-194ea81cd273




- A very new way of making epoxy resin lenses based on bouncy and surface tension

https://scitechdaily.com/fabricating...nd-telescopes/


-Injection Mold and Machining

*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2lj0KjyT8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcBrcSfIeVQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNXgHbBIRYQ



- Casting with sand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miuhxhodpiQ


Additional links:

https://www.zeonex.com/optics.aspx.html

https://www.rp-photonics.com/plastic_optics.html

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics...ptical-plastic