Here's the helmet and lens prior to being modified. This tutorial assumes that you have a 18mm Pentax 110 camera lens with the rear lens cap.
| Introduction: If you want to replace the resin camera lens on your marine helmet with a real, screen accurate one, the lens you want is from a Pentax 110 camera. It's the f 2.8/18mm Pentax-110. ASAHI OPT manufactures this lens. Co of Japan. The Pentax 110 also has/had lenses in the 24mm and 50mm size, but the 18mm is the one you want. Typical price range is US$10 to $25. Use "Pentax 110" as the search string at your favorite online auction service. When searching for this lens make sure you get the 18mm lens, and not the 24mm or the 50mm lens. There's a very obvious size difference when compared side by side, but when viewed alone, the lens look almost identical. You can visually tell the difference by looking at the inscription circling around the front of the lens. On the correct lens, it should say 18mm. Another tip I recommend, is to try and get a lens with the back lens cover. The front lens cover is good for avoiding scratches, but being as these cameras aren't supposed to be functional, kinda isn't important. The back lens on the other hand... you can use that as a more secure mounting hardware for the lens. USCM camera bodies are made out of resin. Normally, to put a real lens in, you can either glue the new lens directly onto the camera body, or you can use the resin mounting slots of the camera body (if it's a clean cast), or both methods together. The problem is that the resin mounting slots that you screw the lens into are made of resin which eventually will break. This is where the rear lens cover comes into place. The rear lens cover is made of hard plastic, and has the exact same mounting slots as the camera body does, only much stronger. All you need to do is dremel or bore a circular space in the camera body lens mounting location for the rear lens cover to slot into so that it's flush with the camera body. Glue the rear lens cover in place, then simply screw in the lens. To make it even more secure, after gluing in the rear lens cover you can drill through the center of the lens cover straight into the camera body, use a flat head wood screw and bolt the lens cover onto the camera body. Then you have the strength of both the glue and a screw holding the lens cover permanently in place. The flat head screw shouldn't obstruct the lens when mounting. Then just super glue the back of the lens, screw it into the lens cover, et voila! Accurate and secure! The following is a step by step approach to achieving this technique. |
| Step 1: Here's the helmet and lens prior to being modified. This tutorial assumes that you have a 18mm Pentax 110 camera lens with the rear lens cap. |
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| Step 2: I removed the lens section from the camera. Steve Radler, whom I bought this particular set of armor from, did a great job of installing the resin casted lens into the housing. It was a very solid job. What made this project a little easier, was the fact that the resin camera housing and resin lens were two separate sections to begin with, so it was easier to detach the lens. Some casts I've come across, had the resin housing and lens as one piece. If this is the case with yours, you'll probably have to saw the lens off. |
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| Step 3: Take a closer look at the circular area where the lens was installed. You'll notice that your 18mm Pentax 110 camera lens' rear cap is identical to the circular area that was cast into the resin camera housing. |
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| Step 4: After measuring the diameter of the rear lens cap, I grabbed a 1 inch wide boring tool that was of the same approximate width as the rear lens cap. |
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| Step 5: Take the 1 inch wide boring drill bit, and remove enough material so that the lens with the rear cap screwed on can fit into that spot. We're essentially removing all the resin material of the rear cap that's casted into the housing. You can do this with a dremel device instead, which may take a little longer, but if done carefully would give you a tighter fit. |
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| Step 6: Then get some 2 part epoxy, and glue the rear lens cap in. Make sure that the lens can still screw into the rear cap. I simply left the cap on the back of the lens, put epoxy behind the lens and on the drilled out section of the housing and squeezed the two together. Make sure you don't get any on the lens itself, because we still need to be able to remove it later. Apply pressure until the epoxy hardens. |
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| Step 7: Once the epoxy has hardened, you should still be able to remove the lens leaving the rear lens cap firmly in place. |
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| Step 8: For added strength, I wanted to drill a screw through the lens cap into the resin housing. I drilled a hole through the center of the rear lens cap, then used a counter sink bit to make a space for the flat head wood screw, so that when screwed in, the screw was flush with the inner surface of the lens cap. |
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| After drilling the screw in,
you'll want to paint the screw's head flat/matte black... otherwise,
you'll be able to see the screw's head through the lens. |
| Step 9: If you don't want the lens to be removable after this, you can glue the lens into the rear lens cap with super glue. Personally, I prefer to have mine removable. If you want the lens removable still, instead of gluing the lens into the rear lens cover, you could place a rubber O-ring behind the lens, and then screw it in. The O-ring should give you a much tighter fit, and because it's rubber, enough traction to hold it in place. |
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| More Examples: Here's another example of a real 18mm Pentax 110 camera lens installed with the same technique. This is my recon helmet. |
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