Well gang... I don't encourage trying this at home unless you're very mechanically inclined but thanks (again!) to our mutual friend in sunny Brighton and my LX now has an accessory that might make a few of you jealous (except cotty...this is nothing compared to how you hotrod your equipment!):
http://www.members.aol.com/bmacrae/lx2.jpg http://www.members.aol.com/bmacrae/lx1.jpg ;-) Peter was kind enough to point out that he sells the replacement lugs for the LX and I so I picked one up from him on my last order. Well, I can tell you that it's not an easy thing to do to retrofit the standard LX grip B, but I'm pretty tenacious and I hate slinging my camera around in portrait orientation. First, one needs to realize that the grip is not hollow underneath the metal plate on the back. This means you have to drill, scrape, and dig out the plastic to make room for the nut to fasten to the lug. And let me say you truly must put a nut on the lug as epoxy or some other way of fashioning it to the grip wouldn't hold it securely enough. Well, at least not for my camera...I really don't want to drop it. Thirdly, when removing the material to fit the nut it's imperative not to destroy the upper right-hand hole for the screw that holds the plate in this area...no walk in the park! However, the biggest challenge I found to this operation was finding a nut to fit the threaded lug itself! I just happened upon mine after searching around my basement for three days (plus visiting three hardware stores, two hobby shops and four hours of internet searching!). The lugs threads are very fine and are metric threads (Japanese made). To be exact its an M4 size shank and the threads are a .3 i think. Anyway, I found the perfect nut to fit the lug from...get this...an old, halfway demolished Som Berthiot zoom lens viewfinder!! What a thrill...it fit perfectly!! Anyway...I also hope y'all notice the soft release which I also ordered from CAMDIR. Thanks again Peter. I've been waiting to try this bit of "Hotrodding" for some time now! Brendan MacRae - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
