Shooting with a Probe Lens

Innovision Probe Lens System

So I have this Innovision Probe lens from back in my days doing Visual Effects for TV and Movies. I have an adapter to use it with the old Canon FD mount. I also have an FD to EF adapter. So I decided to sick this on my Canon T2i and see what would happen.
There are 3 lenses in this particular set that I have, but for todays shooting, I stuck with the 16mm. All three "lenses" screw to the front of the unit, but the focus ring, and iris are all closer to the camera side. Wide open, this lens system is a very slow T-16.
("t" as opposed to "f". This was a cinema lens so it uses the "t-stop". A simple explanation of the difference is: f-stops are mathematically figured by a ratio of the focal length of the lens divided by the aperture diameter. A t-stop includes in the calculation the light loss caused by the light passing through the element. A more detailed explanation is available here. )

Door Track

To be honest, I hadn't put much thought into shooting stills with this. I guess it saw it more as a gag to move the camera through impossibly small places in a movie, and not very useful in a still. Then I thought that the extra couple feet in front of the lens might make for some unique points of view. And in the end, isn't that a great part of photography? showing people things they see all the time, in a way they have never seen them?

This First photograph is from within the door track to the part of the sliding glass door in my apartment that never gets used (and is in fact behind the couch).  The shallow depth of field, and unique perspective really stood out in this photograph to me. (After shooting this, I am seriously thinking of hiring a cleaning service)

Shooting a piece of Coral

The weight of this lens is pretty intense (especially for my plastic bodied Canon T2i , it may not be a concern on a metal bodied camera like the 7D , or 5D ). I shot these photographs with the camera either on the floor, or a desk. I also carried it by the lens so that the weight of the lens wouldn't put undue stress on my lens mount. In the first photograph of the unit (in the case, at the top of the page) there is a cradle system for the lens. I need to figure out how to rig that to work with this camera body before I do a lot more shooting with this system.

To the right, is the Photograph taken in the setup above. I was amazed at how close to the lens I could get, and still achieve focus. (The out of focus area in the foreground was able to be focused on at less then 1/2 an inch from the front of the glass, but that photograph wasn't as ascetically pleasing as this one so...).

So now to think of new ways to play, and new things to photograph with this lens system. If you have any ideas, post them in the comments section.

iPhone close-up

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