Camera Lens Mods and Diys...

I actually have a bunch of cameras that I have accumulated over the years.
Some are older than me, and are just for my collection,
a few pocket cameras,
a tiny 110 film SLR,
a good Canon film SLR (too bad film quality these days is worse than 100 years ago),
a bunch of crappy digital cameras that can't compete with cellphone cameras anymore that I got for free (one of which I converted to an IR camera),
2 digital pocket cameras (one of which was clogged with sand and the cost of fixing it was high than a new camera, so I fixed it myself, and it works fine now),
around 6 compact digital cameras (The kind that look and act like DSLR but with fixed lense), starting with a 12 year old 3MP x10 zoom (Bestest of it's kind when it came out), and ending with a new Finepix HS30 (well, it's my wife's, but I use it too),
and last but not least, a Canon 350D (EOS Rebel XT) which is a proper entry level DSLR. It's about 6 years old and can't be compared to what's on the market today.

Say, when you put on the custom lense, do you use the zoom on the camera at all, or is it more of a fixed zoom? Can you use it combined with Macro mode?

I love how you used low teck cardboard to make the fittings. When I was a kid I built a fairly high power microscope out of a surveyor's scope lenses. I made two cardboard tubes that could slide in and out for different focal length, the problem was that every time I slid the tubes in\out i'd get tiny floating cardboard particles stuck in my view

love your insect pics CF, inspiring, I've got 2 rectangular lens out of an old B/W enlarger I'll have to have fiddle with them to see if I can get something to work

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Don't wanna be scaring those bees..

Honey bees are actually very easy to photograph, if they're busy enough collecting nectar they don't seem to care if I accidentaly bump into them with the lens (That's how close I have to get).
Hornets and wasps... Let's say they only one I ever managed to take an extreme closeup picture of had a little too much beer, and didn't care about much

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So in other words the lens itself is fixed but I can zoom with the cameras zoom...

Yeah, I didn't think you had a motorized cardboard fitting
That projector lens, is it basically a high power magnifying glass?
I have to try this sometime with a lense I have. Being a foot away from the subject is way better than a qurter of an inch. Most insects are camera shy at this distance, especialy ladybirds.

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Damn Particles

You've seen them too, huh? Floating lazily in mid air between the lenses...

You remind me of a guy on youtube that explains how he built an electron scanning microscope at home....
The craziest part is he makes it sound so simple, except for the part he admitted it took him 3 month to get it to show an image.
He's all like: "So I took a long brass pipe, and stuck the electron gun inside, then you can see here the 2 plates that act as lenses for the electrons, all it needs is around 800 volts and you're set, then here I put some washers to make more stable, and then I added some ribbons to make it pretty, La Di Da"....

But seriously, if you look at his microscope, it looks like a bunch of scrap metal and plastic the about 2 feet tall, but it actually works.

Oh, and he also shows you how to build a geiger counter at home, make an X-Ray tube at home, so you'll be able to test the geiger counter, and so on...


Also, reminds me of David Hahn, the nuclear boy scout. He built a nuclear reactor at his mom's back yard.

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dang now I have to go look that up...

Here's his channel. This guy built several of my long childhood dreams, like a fulid dynamics coffe table (Shows up poorly in the video though), cloud chamber, scotch tape X-Ray machine...
http://www.youtube.com/user/bkraz333?feature=watch

Yeah, I've seen a few of those scanner cameras on the internet. While the overall quality of the photos isn't that great, you get cool effects on moving subjects

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As long as its not watermelon gum then I could do something with that

Watermelon gum? Yuck!

I'm liking this discussion guys .... Reminds me of my old 35mm days ... I jury rigged lots of crazy stuff ... my favorites were using a door spy lense as a fish eye and a big multi fresnel lense to create effects in video ... It is fun to hear about other folk's great on the fly ideas ...... Oh yea, I built a robot from an oil drum when I was a kid(It didn't move much but I put a speaker in it's head and convinced some little neighborhood kids it could talk).....

If I understand you correctly you mean that if you look with your eye through the lense, you see it upside down, but when you look at the same thing from the same distance through the camera you see it right side up?
If that's the case, it's because the camera lense probably flips the image a second time, so it comes up the right side up, while your eye doesn't flip it.

Great discussion on a subject that fascinates me (macro photography)!
I did some experiments in that area using cheap close ups, but was never happy with final results!
I'll certainly try those diy tips!

Thank you for sharing those valuable infos here!

converting a boombox