The Panasonic Lumix 26mm F8 Pancake lens arrived with much controversy when it released along the now much loved Lumix S9. The idea of a manual focus fixed (you can’t change it at all) aperture F8 lens seemed like an odd choice to most but a very few.
While there is nothing we can do about this being a manual focus lens (Short of fixing the DJI Lidar system to it LOL) some clever folk have come up with a solution to remedy that F8 part of the lens for those chasing more light in their images or shallower depth of field. I found this tutorial on the video sharing platform bilibili.com (Original video https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1US8yeGE8r/) but as I have zero understanding of the Chinese language I had to try my best to follow along and fiddle around until I worked it out.
Anyway I decided to write this and make the accompanying video on my Youtube to help those English speakers amongst us who don’t quite benefit fully from the above video.
Onwards to the process!
What you need:
- PH00 Screwdriver
- Tweezers
- Piece of plastic to place the circular aperture on incase you wish to reverse the process for some reason.
OBVIOUSLY you do this at your own risk. I will not be responsible if you mess this up.
STEP 1: Flip the lens over and remove the rear cap to reveal the five Philips Head screws. Remove these screws.
Step 2: Flip the rear mount piece aside gently making sure not to damage the contacts, ribbon and pcb it is connected to. From here you have access to another three Philips Head screws you must remove too.
Step 3: There are three kind of locking mechanisms you can use the tweezers to release in the locations above to free the front piece of plastic. The front should pop off quite easily.
Step 4: This is where the tweezers come in handy again to help remove this little piece of sticky plastic that creates the F8 aperture. Place it aside on a bit of plastic so you can peel it off easily incase you wish to reverse this mod for some reason.
Blow away any dust that may have built up before you close it all back up.
Step 5: Make sure the lens element in the middle is still sitting in its helical slots otherwise the focus function will not work. So from here you want to line up the arrow on that inner ring allowing for the plastic with that extra bit circled in the second picture to click back in.
Step 6: Put the previous parts aside and grab the above ring and unscrew the two tiny screws holding in the lens contacts to free it.
Step 7: Place the PCD on so it lines up with the pins highlighted which should hold in in place.
Step 8: Then the shell of the lens should like up with where the contacts rest in third picture. One thing to make sure of is the bits in the fourth picture lines up with the bits that stick up on the lens stack allowing the ability to focus.
Step 9: Replace these three screws.
Step 10: Place the mount ring back on making sure to clear the contacts which should be held in place by once this piece is lined up. Put the five screws back in.
Step 11: The final part is to put back in the two screws that fasten the contacts in place and there you have it. A converted lens that now should allow in substantially more light. I hope this has helped you out if this is something you wanted to try.