[Gingerthecat]

I saw a lens by Ricoh described as a Toy lens. Fixed focus etc Q 05 18mm and it was unbelievably cheap, £10 for a brand new lens. I hadn’t heard of the Q mount before: is there a converter to PK and if there is, would it ruin the focal length?
I know that one can obtain toy lens effects with Lensbaby, which are many times more expensive and one has to bear in mind that over here in the little old UK, we’re all poor as church mice. Is there any other kit to produce a similar effect? Ever since I had a toy camera as a child, from Woolworth, I’ve been attracted by the quirky pictures I used to take.
Happy Christmas to you all.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

Pentax Q - PentaxForums.com

^ That lens is for the Pentax "Q" mirrorless cameras. It's basically useless for a K-mount camera.

[tvdtvdtvd]

Welcome to Pentax and Pentax Forums. The Q is a serious camera in a small package. It's small form factor allows it to be highly portable
and it's short focal flange distance allows almost any mount to adapt to it, creating the potential for a very wide range of uses. Clearly someone
at Pentax recognized the potential for experimentation and designed a purpose built 'toy' lens for the Q system.

Q 04 Toy Lens

Note that £10 is a very good price for the lens. It would be worth snapping up at that price simply to resell if you didn't have interest in keeping
it.

[kypfer]

I saw a lens by Ricoh described as a Toy lens. Fixed focus etc Q 05 18mm and it was unbelievably cheap, £10 for a brand new lens. I hadn’t heard of the Q mount before: is there a converter to PK and if there is, would it ruin the focal length?
I know that one can obtain toy lens effects with Lensbaby, which are many times more expensive and one has to bear in mind that over here in the little old UK, we’re all poor as church mice. Is there any other kit to produce a similar effect? Ever since I had a toy camera as a child, from Woolworth, I’ve been attracted by the quirky pictures I used to take.
Happy Christmas to you all.

If you're a little bit handy with a hacksaw, drill and a file, find yourself an old Brownie 127, disassemble/wreck it sufficiently to leave yourself with just the (single element) lens and surrounding mount and aperture plate, then take a plastic body cap and make a half-inch or so hole in the middle of it, alternatively a T2 mount or short extension tube may be pressed into service.

Using whatever resources are available ... cardboard tube, sticky-back plastic, blue-tack etc., mount the lens suitably in front of the hole in the body-cap or in the T2 mount or extension tube, then fit the whole to the camera and bingo ... 'toy' lens

A little amount of adjustment will be necessary to get the focus right, then you're good to go ... a lens hood does improve things

Don't forget to set the appropriate menu choice to "Use aperture ring" to enable the shutter to operate without a "proper" lens fitted!

Point to consider :
Many/most "basic" 35mm or Instamatic cameras have relatively short focal length lenses, to enable them to be "focus-free". Unfortunately, for this purpose, this also means that they would need to be mounted too close to the sensor (too deep into the camera body), to be practical. Hence the choice of the longer focal-length lens from a 127 camera

Alternative commercial options have included the Itorex "Pan-focus" lens, a 50mm unit with a fixed f/40 aperture and a T2-mount, also there was a fixed-focus 35mm f/5.6 in K-mount variously branded "Prinzflex", "Cherry", and others which was basically an extension tube with interchangeable optical units, one of which gave a taking lens, the other giving a 2x adaptor ... strictly novelty value, but it might be what you're looking for


A little further "research" has turned up the Loreo "Lens in a cap" solution ... I've no experience of this, but mention it because it looks like it might be fun

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Last edited by kypfer; 12-24-2019 at 11:20 AM. Reason: Further research

[boriscleto]

There was a "Holga" 60mm lens for K-mount. They're a bit hard to find now because they aren't made anymore...

There is one on eBay from Hong Kong for $56...

[PJ1]

As explained in the first reply, registration distance is the problem. The Q mount has a registration distance of 9.2mm, K mount is 45.46 mm. Apart from the suggestions above, you could drill a hole in a K mount body cap and fit the lens to that. Then it would act like a macro lens mounted with a 36.26mm extension tube. I don't know if that would work with a fixed focus lens. But the concepts of "toy" and "macro" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. If you did achieve some kind of focus, the resulting images would be interesting.

But welcome to the Forums. Stick around and you will learn some interesting stuff - and contribute some if you start experimenting!