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So, I grabbed a 45mm for my X5R last week and ran into the usual balancing problem. With the X5R, it's very back heavy so the lens wants to point upwards. I looked into other people's solutions including buying large lens hoods, taping pound coins to the top or using blu-tak etc but didn't like these options.
I'm sharing my solution just in case anybody else is in the same boat as I was and can't deal with the less pretty remedies.
I purchased a step up ring so that my 46mm polar pro filters would be usable on the 37mm threaded 45mm lens. I had hoped this may balance it...
The step up ring and filter were not heavy enough to balance the lens, so I added the 15mm DJI lens balance ring between the two. Too heavy.
I figured for the X5R, I needed to add 17g of weight to the front of the 45mm lens to balance it perfectly. The polar pro filters are ~ 6g, so that's 11g that I need to add somehow in a usable, neat way.
I took the step up ring and 15mm balance ring, screwed them together and made a full silicone mold of them. Including threads etc. Once removed from the mold, I mixed up some clear resin and then added 10g of iron powder to it, allowing 1g for the resin (In reality I calculated this more carefully, I figured how many ml the mold would take first, then the weight of the relevant ml in resin and deducted the ml equivalent of 10g iron powder) Then syringed this into the mold.
The resulting piece screws straight onto the front of the 45mm lens due to keeping the thread detail in the mold and allows different ND filters to be screwed onto the front of it, whilst balancing perfectly.
Obviously, this works with polar pro filters. If you use different filters then you would have to account their weight. I made a second unit, with more iron powder, to make it 17g in weight without a filter so that I can also balance the lens without a filter.
I know this sounds like a lot of work in writing but it's really quite simple and solves the problem very well whilst looking like you purchased a clean, purpose built solution. Important to people like me who cannot deal with a bit of Blu-tak, or a coin taped to the front of the unit.
Just thought I'd share...
Sent from my iPad using InspirePilots
I'm sharing my solution just in case anybody else is in the same boat as I was and can't deal with the less pretty remedies.
I purchased a step up ring so that my 46mm polar pro filters would be usable on the 37mm threaded 45mm lens. I had hoped this may balance it...
The step up ring and filter were not heavy enough to balance the lens, so I added the 15mm DJI lens balance ring between the two. Too heavy.
I figured for the X5R, I needed to add 17g of weight to the front of the 45mm lens to balance it perfectly. The polar pro filters are ~ 6g, so that's 11g that I need to add somehow in a usable, neat way.
I took the step up ring and 15mm balance ring, screwed them together and made a full silicone mold of them. Including threads etc. Once removed from the mold, I mixed up some clear resin and then added 10g of iron powder to it, allowing 1g for the resin (In reality I calculated this more carefully, I figured how many ml the mold would take first, then the weight of the relevant ml in resin and deducted the ml equivalent of 10g iron powder) Then syringed this into the mold.
The resulting piece screws straight onto the front of the 45mm lens due to keeping the thread detail in the mold and allows different ND filters to be screwed onto the front of it, whilst balancing perfectly.
Obviously, this works with polar pro filters. If you use different filters then you would have to account their weight. I made a second unit, with more iron powder, to make it 17g in weight without a filter so that I can also balance the lens without a filter.
I know this sounds like a lot of work in writing but it's really quite simple and solves the problem very well whilst looking like you purchased a clean, purpose built solution. Important to people like me who cannot deal with a bit of Blu-tak, or a coin taped to the front of the unit.
Just thought I'd share...
Sent from my iPad using InspirePilots
