Just bought a macro bellows off eBay, and there's a problem with it. In the
listing photo, there was obviously some sort of lens attached to the front
of it; okay, hopefully it just sweetens the deal.
What I couldn't tell from the photo was that the lens was attached with
_glue_. (looks like JB Weld/Chemical Metal, to be precise). Similarly, the
rear part has some sort of camera mount glued in place..
The vendor doesn't normally sell camera equipment, so they didn't realise
that this would be a problem; the description read "it says Olympus auto
bellows on it and there's a bit that slides back and forth on a track". This
is accurate, but not quite the whole story..
Now, they're willing to let me return the thing, which is nice of them,
but they'd rather I kept it "for parts" and they'll refund the difference
between what I paid and the value for parts. The annoying thing is that the
bellows itself is fine, the track is fine, it's just the lens/camera mounts
that are useless.
Is there anything I can do with this?
Two possibilities come to mind:
1. Take a Dremel to the thing, hack off the front lens and the rear camera
mount, hollow out a body cover/lens cover and glue them to the respective
ends, and see how it goes. (or do the same sort of thing with a cheap
teleconverter for more metallic fixing points).
2. Discard the bellows entirely, discard one of the mounting points, chop
the top off the other mounting point, drill and tap a hole into it, and turn
it into a focus rail.
Neither of these seems particularly attractive; the first seems likely to
wind up with some sort of weird offset problem if I'm not careful and I'm
not sure how solid the final thing will be; the second seems less prone to
failure, but I hate to be that destructive..
On the other hand, I don't think the bellows is much use to anyone as it
stands.
Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to the actual value of what I have
here? Given the vendor was, as far as they knew, perfectly honest, I'd like
to help out if possible -- but at the same time I don't want to end up
keeping something that's junk just to be polite..
thanks,
-- dan
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