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Tape + Glasses = DIY Fisheye Lens
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 3:00 AM on January 3, 2008
Photo-project site Photojojo offers a simple guide to creating a cheap fisheye lens—the kind that give great skateboarding and sports shots their all-encompassing look—for a digital SLR camera. The only ingredients are a pair of far-sighted glasses (the thicker the lenses, the better) and black electrical tape. You won't have an easily swap-able attachment or a professional wide-angle lens, but you capture some pretty unique angles, as shown in the related Flickr set. Point-and-shoot enthusiasts can get similar results with an $11 wide angle lens.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
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OptoGeek
Posted 9:41 AM 2/1/08
Actually, now that I think about it some more, you're definitely going to be decreasing the field of view if you increase the distance but don't change the lens diameter (which is obviously impossible). So a better solution might be just to slap together the two plus-lenses from a pair of glasses and tape that to the camera.
OptoGeek
OptoGeek
Posted 9:27 AM 2/1/08
Of course you knew I had to put my two cents in on this one... TipNut recommends using a high powered far-sighted glasses lens (a plus-powered lens; or the same type of lens you would find in drugstore reading glasses).
If all you have is a low-powered lens (or if you have a high-powered lens but want to create an even more dramatic effect), you should be able to increase the effective power of the lens by increasing the distance between the glasses lens and the camera lens. I haven't actually tried it though. It's up to you how to figure out how to do that without decreasing the field of view, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.
OptoGeek
booshpilot
Posted 11:44 AM 2/1/08
Looks like it doesn't really increase field of view--just adds barrel distortion to the outside edges of the image. Easier to do with P-Chop!
booshpilot
DrunkenMaster
Posted 11:28 AM 2/1/08
I haven't tried this with a pair of reading glasses, but I may give it a shot (pun intended). I have used a pair of sun-glasses as a quick & cheap polarizer. See here [picasaweb.google.com] It's not the greatest pic, but does show that it works. It cut down the glair of the pond, so that I could shoot the fish in the water.
DrunkenMaster
OptoGeek
Posted 2:15 PM 2/1/08
Interesting, I had always thought the barrel distortion was the goal of fish-eye photos... but increasing FOV definitely makes more sense.
OptoGeek
FLEB
Posted 4:00 PM 2/1/08
I'd actually thought of doing this by mounting one of the larger (inch-ish diameter?) magnifying peepholes to a lens-- one of the kind you mount onto a door. I'm figuring that the optical properties would be less than stunning, but I imagine you'd get a more uniform image.
Never got around to it, though-- I suppose I ought to hit up the hardware store again, now that I'm out taking pics with the DSLR more often.
FLEB
Bryan Price
Posted 3:12 PM 2/1/08
Every time I've combined electrical tape with glasses, I came out Geek. The parents really hated it when I broke them in the bridge, and I had to get new frames. The doctor wouldn't let me get wire frames because I was so "rough" on them. Today, hell yeah I'd be wearing the new memory metal ones. I have a pair of those now, and I can sleep in them and they still fit me perfectly when I wake up. I just have to use hot water to get the grease off the lenses.
Bryan Price
Michaelwon
Posted 7:45 AM 3/1/08
hey now that's really neat! I will definitely be trying this with my friends!
Michaelwon
fmpfilms
Posted 10:54 AM 5/1/08
Based on this tutorial, I had the idea to make a macro lens from a pair of binoculars. Check it out here.
[www.metacafe.com]
fmpfilms