Cheap Hack for Leica: 30mm ƒ/10 Kodak Disposable Camera Lens

Some clever entrepreneurs in China have introduced an inexpensive lens for Leica thread mount cameras: a plastic housing containing a Kodak 30mm ƒ/10 lens from a disposable (i.e., one-use) camera. They must have removed the lens units from the Kodak KB32 camera (or sourced brand new ones) and remounted them in 39mm, Leica M, and several other plastic mounts. The lens has no aperture control and it is fixed focus. In other words, you must use it at ƒ/10 and hope that depth of field will cover the focus of anything in your scene. 

Some of these little lenses for disposable cameras are rather sophisticated and consist of aspherical units molded out of some plastic. Up through the 1990s, aspherical glass surfaces were very expensive to make because of the super-precise grinding that was necessary. But modern molding machines made cheap one-use cameras with reasonably good optical output possible. They were not discarded. After the lab processed the customer's film, the factory (or a contractor) loaded the body with fresh film for a new customer. 

Here are some examples from my Leica IIIC camera on Fuji Acros 100. On film, it is optically fair. Mine is uneven left to right. But it makes interesting B&W shots of the type of grubby stuff that I photograph. Best focus may be about 2 - 3m from the camera. It works best to crop a couple of mm from the edges of each frame. Oops item: finger in some frames. When using this 30mm hack lens, I will need to hold my Leica IIIC without wrapping my hand around the front. 

Iron window frames from former Federal Courthouse and Post Office, 820 Crawford St., Vicksburg

Loading dock of former Post Office

Magnolia School, Bowman Street, Vicksburg

Magnolia School, Bowman Street, Vicksburg

Mounted on my digital Fuji X-E1 camera, the Kodak lens has rather poor contrast and does not handle flare well. In the example below, I added contrast and sharpened significantly.  

Pecan tree, Drummond Street, Vicksburg

Summary. Not too good optically, but compact and well worth packing in the camera bag. Works well with gritty topics.