M12 lens adapter for camera module

[poing]

I hope I can save you time, money, and headaches (and some tears).
I had a LOT of those figuring the following setup out.

1st, the rPi's camera board is fantastic.
Get an extended "CSI" flex cable from adafruit or somewhere... the stock cable is very short.
A longer one (12" or more) will give you more flexibility, and they are cheap.

2nd, buy this adapter from eBay: Vello Nikon F Mount Lens to C Mount Camera Adapter
3rd, buy a Nikon lens from eBay. (Nikon's lenses' brand is "Nikkor"... same company, different name)
4th, buy the adapter the gentleman in this page mentions:
http://www.truetex.com/raspberrypi
He manufactures them and sells them.
The problem is price (150$ish) and time (about 3 weeks for delivery).

Here is the setup:
#1- take the Nikon lens, and open up the iris manually... it has a little mechanical level on the backside.
Hold the iris open with a small glob of hot glue.
#2- Put your Nikon lens into the Vello adapter from eBay
#3- take the Nikon+Vello combo, and screw it into the metal adapter from truetex.
#4- remove the rPi camera board's little plastic lens
#5- use the two screws (included with the truetex adapter) to fix the entire combo (Nikon+Vello+truetex) onto the rPi camera board

The image quality is excellent... perfect.
You can buy polarizers for the Nikon lens.
You buy big Nikon lenses, or small ones... wide angle, or whatever angle.

You mentioned 11 cm focus.... I have no idea what that is.

One thing:
I have bought various Nikon lenses.
They all work awesome... yet the focus distance is kind of off.

For example, a Nikon 18-35 lens, I am unable to get a "sharp" image when set at 18mm-ish.
I have to turn the rings until I am in the 20-24mm range (this measurement is by eye).
Once in that range (and higher), you can then move the "focus" the image to make it "sharp".

As to Nikon vs Canon lenses,... only one reason.
The Nikon lens, to open the iris, you can do it manually as I mentioned above.
The Canon lenses, it is electronic.

I hope this helps you.
I threw thousands of dollars into this problem... with many, many hours invested in figuring the above setup out.

You can do better and cheaper like this (rear lens cap with an end cap of a sewer pipe):
As an extra advantage you have four screws to adjust the distance and perpendicularity of the sensor, which is very important to get the optimum image quality; the sensor is glued to the board with a pad and not by definition perpendicular to the lens axis.

[prgiorgio]

Thank you so much for your answers.

I'll try this week end.

[jplee3]

Hey all,

Curious to know if a standard 12mm peephole viewer (for doors) would be able to mount to the plastic m12 lens adapter (per http://wiki.raspberrytorte.com/index.ph ... odifcation)

I'm trying to figure out a way to setup a peephole camera on my door in place of the regular peephole and leverage the Raspi + Raspi Cam for this purpose. I actually don't even have the Raspi cam yet but am researching as much as possible before jumping in.


Thanks!

[jbeale]

AFAIK the "standard" door peephole is like a wide angle adaptor; it does not focus light like a camera lens focuses light on the sensor, but rather makes an existing lens (like your eye) have a wider field of view. So you could not simply mount the door peephole on a 12mm lens holder.

However, you might be able to simply put a standard R-Pi camera up against the standard door peephole assembly- worth a try.

[jplee3]

AFAIK the "standard" door peephole is like a wide angle adaptor; it does not focus light like a camera lens focuses light on the sensor, but rather makes an existing lens (like your eye) have a wider field of view. So you could not simply mount the door peephole on a 12mm lens holder.

However, you might be able to simply put a standard R-Pi camera up against the standard door peephole assembly- worth a try.

Thanks for the info! I've looked all over and it doesn't seem like they make any adapters for this purpose...unless I'm looking in the wrong places. This seems like something to try out though for sure. It would be a great excuse to pickup the camera And I suppose if it worked and you really wanted to get fancy, you could attach and LCD to output the camera display (but I'm guessing you'd need to get one of those GPIO header extenders).

BTW: any thoughts on going with the UK camera vs China-knockoff version that seems more prominent on the likes of Ebay,etc?

[jbeale]

If you buy on ebay, you take your chances. Some of them are the "IR" version (no IR filter) but they don't tell you. Others will not work unless you always turn the camera LED on, because they mis-copied the circuit. Some (it seems to me) are more noisy in low light, maybe bad circuit layout or poor/missing filter caps. It's the easiest way to get a M12 mount version of the camera though, if you need that (for this project I'd argue you don't).

[cparrish60]

http://www.m12lenses.com/CNC-Machined-R ... 021rpp.htm

[gonzolabs]

Hi everybody.

I need a camera like the raspberry "Raspberry Pi Camera Board"
but with configurable focus distance. I need 11 cm ideal focus, while
the standard camera in the chamera board is much different,
so the problem is to buy lenses or have a camera built with 11 cm focus distance.

I see many of you have resolved the problem.
Could you suggest the extension to buy to adapt the camera board to the 11 cm focus?

Or instead (and maybe bettere) a usb camera with that focus that is compatible with the rasbperry pi?

Thank you in advance.
Giorgio

I hope I can save you time, money, and headaches (and some tears).
I had a LOT of those figuring the following setup out.

1st, the rPi's camera board is fantastic.
Get an extended "CSI" flex cable from adafruit or somewhere... the stock cable is very short.
A longer one (12" or more) will give you more flexibility, and they are cheap.

2nd, buy this adapter from eBay: Vello Nikon F Mount Lens to C Mount Camera Adapter
3rd, buy a Nikon lens from eBay. (Nikon's lenses' brand is "Nikkor"... same company, different name)
4th, buy the adapter the gentleman in this page mentions:
http://www.truetex.com/raspberrypi
He manufactures them and sells them.
The problem is price (150$ish) and time (about 3 weeks for delivery).

Here is the setup:
#1- take the Nikon lens, and open up the iris manually... it has a little mechanical level on the backside.
Hold the iris open with a small glob of hot glue.
#2- Put your Nikon lens into the Vello adapter from eBay
#3- take the Nikon+Vello combo, and screw it into the metal adapter from truetex.
#4- remove the rPi camera board's little plastic lens
#5- use the two screws (included with the truetex adapter) to fix the entire combo (Nikon+Vello+truetex) onto the rPi camera board

The image quality is excellent... perfect.
You can buy polarizers for the Nikon lens.
You buy big Nikon lenses, or small ones... wide angle, or whatever angle.

You mentioned 11 cm focus.... I have no idea what that is.

One thing:
I have bought various Nikon lenses.
They all work awesome... yet the focus distance is kind of off.

For example, a Nikon 18-35 lens, I am unable to get a "sharp" image when set at 18mm-ish.
I have to turn the rings until I am in the 20-24mm range (this measurement is by eye).
Once in that range (and higher), you can then move the "focus" the image to make it "sharp".

As to Nikon vs Canon lenses,... only one reason.
The Nikon lens, to open the iris, you can do it manually as I mentioned above.
The Canon lenses, it is electronic.

I hope this helps you.
I threw thousands of dollars into this problem... with many, many hours invested in figuring the above setup out.

I (mostly) followed your advice, VacuumMarshmallow. I bought the universal adaptor from TrueTex, attached it to the R-pi camera board after removing the tiny lens, and then I screwed it into a 17-104mm C-mount lens that I bought on ebay.

Problems:
1) The image is blurry at almost any distance.
2) I am getting the magenta vignetting problem that is mentioned on another thread on this blog. It is improved by including the -st parameter in the raspistill command, but it is very, very far from fixed.

Can you confirm that your image quality is indeed "perfect"?

If so, then I am willing to exactly replicate your setup. But so far, I have spent about $300 for a non-functional R-pi camera set up. : (

[jbeale]

"17-104mm C-mount lens that I bought on ebay. "
I can pretty much guarantee that lens was not designed for a sensor with 1.4 micron pixel size. There may be other factors but I think that's the main one, the small size of the RPi cam sensor is in effect magnifying a small portion of the area that lens projects, and the defects are magnified with it. The stock RPi camera included lens is tiny and inexpensive but don't sell it short, it's a double asphere design and it does pretty well for what it is.

[gonzolabs]

Please take a look at this very long page of camera lenses connected to a Raspberry pi camera board:

http://www.truetex.com/raspberrypi

Is there a single one that you think might work? Or did I just waste $150?

[jbeale]

Perhaps you can request a sample image using the RPi camera, from the vendor of those lens mounts to see if it meets your requirements.

[gonzolabs]

I have emailed extensively with the vendor. For those coming to this discussion without context, we're talking about the universal lens adapter for the Raspberry Pi camera board by TrueTex:

http://www.truetex.com/raspberrypi

The adapter is very well designed and machined. It does indeed attach C-mount lenses snugly to the camera board. But you shouldn't get too optimistic about the many lenses featured on that page. The vendor admitted to me that he had not tested them. And indeed I have now tested a range of C-mount lenses and also a couple of Nikkor lenses using a Nikon-to-C-mount adapter. Most worked horribly. It was impossible to get a sharp focus and there was a very prominent magenta circular defect in the images.

To his credit, the vendor worked with me (by email) on this problem. We deduced that this is likely a result of the Raspberry Pi's imaging software rather than the adapter. The camera board and the Raspicam software work together to fix the major distortions of the camera board's tiny lens and sensor. So that software "fix" ruins the image from more powerful lenses.

However, the results I'm describing are for my specific project: Capturing a landscape from a window. Maybe it works great on a microscope.

I have asked the vendor to put a prominent warning at the top of his webpage describing these limitations. I hope he puts it up. And I also hope the Raspberry Pi foundation comes out with a truly open source camera solution.

[jbeale]

The circular magenta artifact is due to software compensation of the stock lens. The low resolution is not. If you don't see the same resolution as what the stock lens delivers, you can blame that on the lens. Again, most C-mount lenses are not designed for 1.4 um pixel sensors. I've used a range of M12 ("S-mount" 12 mm x 0.5 mm) lenses from 2.5 mm up to 25 mm focal length and they can all deliver what I would consider "reasonable" images on the RPi camera sensor (meaning useful, just not perfectly crisp).

Note, the useful lenses are f/1.8, f/2.0 or slower; I have also tried some f/1.4 lenses but they are quite fuzzy on this camera. Using the 25 mm f/2.0 telephoto lens outdoors at ranges of 50 feet or more, the main limitation I found was atmospheric distortion. On video you can clearly see "heat shimmer" effects making everything wave around a little bit.

[Dr H]

WaveShare is offering RPi cameras with s-mount objectives. You can easily change the lenses to others of your choice.

I acctually managed to construct a reasonably good, inexpensive and easy to build microscope using the WaveShare B camera with the provided 6 mm focus length lens. In addition I am using 8 mm and 12 mm focus length lenses that I had ordered from a specialist shop. In my experience the relatively chap 12mm lens (14€) gave the best images so far.

I could reach a resolution of about 2-3 µm per pixel.
There are a number of limitations:
- I see the yellow center/magenta rim effect, probably due to chromatic aberation,
- the area in focus is limited to a center area and
- the depth of field is extremely small.

Please have a look on my "Instructable": http://www.instructables.com/id/ARPM-An ... -from-Ple/ , where you may find a detailed description, a building plan and some example images. There is also an earlier version with some gear elements that was build from LEGO, also shown on "Instructables". There you will also find serveral images taken with the original 6 mm focus lens.

Have a look on the project page and let me know your ideas for improvements and science projects that may be performed using the microscope.

[ab1]

Hi there, I realise I am coming about 3 years too late, but I was wondering where you bought this F1.2 lens from?

I just fit a M12 adapter to my Pi camera and would like to play with a few different lenses..

Cheers!

[reednoel4u]

Dear @rkinch,
I have a Len from old camera in fpv camera.
Can I change the Len of pi 1.3 with this one ? I don't know that, can it focus right picture ?

23828670_1663178143742709_949622453_o.jpg (60.62 KiB) Viewed 20028 times

[HermannSW]

I am late to M12 mount lense party as well. I found this thread some time ago and ordered two lenses for 2$ each and 2pcs/lot M12 mount for 2$ as well, in order to get some handson. Among my 7 working v1 cameras (I have 1 v2 as well), two of the three NoIR cameras do have lenses.

I read in one of the previous postings that the M12 mount does not fit as is because of the small camera connector cable on v1 camera board. Luckily I got a present from my family last birthday I had not asked for, a Dremmel 3000.

Today I used it the very first time and was really surprised how easy it is to get some unwanted metal out of the way:



This is after the mount was screwed onto v1 module:



Before removing the original lense I made a "raspistill -o test.jpg", and indeed part of mount can be seen left:



Next I took my only dead camera module and learned how to carefully remove the lense, first with nipper, then with fingers. Photo is taken with Android smartphone and Macro lense clip-on. I have never seen a raw camera sensor before:



This is photo with ' IR 1080P f6.0mm 1/2.7" ' lense, 65° (same distance to Lego pieces as with the other photos):



This is photo with ' 1080P 2.8mm IR ' lense, 130°:



Last, but not least, a mirror selfie with 2.8mm lense. On middle back of Raspberry 2B board you can see the two tin-solder balls I have soldered onto PP39 and PP40 to connect logic analyzer for decoding I2C traffic to camera:



For some reason both lenses do a have a little free play, contrary to the NoIR v1 module lenses I have. But with this M12 lense mount I can easily change the distance of lenses to raw camera sensor, allowing to get focus where needed.

P.S:
I just tested that, lense only 5cm above board, and very clear photo allowing to read everything:

[HermannSW]

Wow, the f6.0mm 65° lense is really cool, super sharp photo with much details even if only 1.5cm apart from object, due to adjustability of the lense in new M12 mount !



These are the two tin-solder balls that I soldered onto Raspberry Pi 2B PP39(SCL0) and PP40(SDA0) for connection of logic analyzer clamps and analyzing I2C traffic from Pi to Raspberry camera. So much details!! You can right click and open/magify in new browser tab:



P.S:
This detail is good candidate for "what is that?" riddle:



P.P.S:
Now lense being 4mm apart from object, I am only able to get 1 tin-solder ball into focus.
(this tin-solder ball size is double diameter to previous photo one if you right-click and view at original size for both)

[HermannSW]

This is photo detail of only PP40 tin-solder ball from previous 2592x1944 v1 camera photo:



Doing the math is cool for this one:
I measured the PP40 tin-solder ball diameter as 1mm.
The ball diameter measured with gimp shows 1014 pixel (horizontally).
That is 1mm/1000pixel = 1μm/pixel !!

I just read that ppi or ppcm are for devices.
So for the camera with that lense and 4mm apart from object this is 10,000ppcm or 25,400ppi ...

[HermannSW]

I wanted to know a little bit more exactly what the resolution is. I had no graph paper, but printed an A4 page 1mm graph paper from http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/ on new HP M102w laser jet printer and glued part of it onto a flat metal surface (the only Pi Essential box that I have):



Because the camera is now (nearly) exactly vertically, I could not get the lense as far out as before, this is maximum so that the lense does not fall out of M12 mount. Lense is roughly 2.5mm above the paper, and I did take photo of a corner of the graphpaper:



The part cut out of the photo is 3mm long, you can see here (right click to see at original size):



This detail is of width 1767 pixels, therefore we have here "only" 1.7μm/pixel (compared to previous 1μm/pixel). Nevertheless this is 589 pixel per mm, and you can cover more than 3mm*2mm area with constant good focus:

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi2B:~ $ bc -ql
3000/1767
1.69779286926994906621
1767/3
589.00000000000000000000

P.S:
Similar setup, lense position in M12 mount unmodified. This is 0.96" 128x64 OLED of a ESP32 module ...

[HermannSW]

...
For some reason both lenses do a have a little free play, contrary to the NoIR v1 module lenses I have.
...

That was just silly. I looked on how to connect the 2nd M12 mount I received to the one and only v2 camera (NoIR) I have and realized that there is a little screw hole on one side of the mount. And I received 6 screws with 2 M12 mounts, 2 being shorter than the other 4. The shorter screw allows to perfectly fix lens in a given position in M12 mount (see on the left below).

It is too late here now to take out the Dremmel for cutting notch into M12 mount where needed for v2 camera connector cable. But I will do that tomorrow ...

P.S:
v1 cameras I own, as well as the v2 camera, do show 21mm screw hole distance.
The connector I bought has 20mm hole distance, but screwing M12 mount to v1 camera above was easy.

[HermannSW]

I did it -- although I only have one v2 camera, I did remove its lens, did cut notch into M12 lens mount with Dremmel, screwed it on v2 camera module and put in f6.0mm 65° lens. The most difficult part was definitely to unscrew the existing v2 camera lens -- not sure whether it would be possible to put back. But what I have seen sofar with M12 mount lenses there is no reason to go back.


A mm is roughly 732 pixels, so resolution is 1.36μm/pixel. 8MP image taken with 3m long ribbon cable.

[HermannSW]

Same camera, same lens.
Having a deep look into lens from 2cm above
1079x559 image cut out from 1980x1080 frame, 1000lm Ikea light from below:

[HermannSW]

I got a 20° lense and wanted to get less μm/pixel.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/16mm-Le ... 02070.html

Unfortunately that lense, even when screwed out maximally in M12 mount, required 7cm distance to object for getting sharp image, and therefore resolution was worse than 1.36μm/pixel achieved before, only 5μm/pixel:
https://twitter.com/HermannSW/status/977645681757310976



Today two M12 extension rings arrived, which I ordered to allow for closer distance to object with 20° lense. And really it worked! Still distance to object cannot be less than 18mm for sharp image with maximally screwed out extensions rings and lense. But with that setup I get 2012 pixel for 4 times 0.5mm of FPC to DIP adapter board pin distance with Raspberry v1 camera, and that is (slightly less) than 1μm/pixel(!):



I just ordered another pair of extension rings, those should allow for closer lens to object distance and higher resolution sharp images.

[HermannSW]

Today I did put the M12 extensions rings and 20° lense onto v2 camera M12 mount.
Same 18mm distance to object with maximal screw out.
And 2604 pixels for 2mm, that is 0.77μm/pixel for v2 camera:

Code: Select all

$ echo "2000/2604" | bc -ql
.76804915514592933947
$ 

P.S:
Much better resolutions can be achived with 20° lens and 3.98° lens, best sofar is 0.12μm/pixel.
See details in "Creating a RPI-assisted microscope" thread:
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=210605