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Super Macro Your Cellphone Camera With A DVD Lens
I'll admit, Super Macro Your Cell Phone Camera With A DVD Lens is one weird title.
However, if you just moved to a blu ray DVD player and you're looking for some good use for your old DVD, cnflikt (who also took the shots for this tutorial) came up with a hack to enable you to take super macro shots with your cellphone. Of course you'll need a camera phone for that. cnflikt uses the notorious, yet old-skooled K800i, but any camera phone will work here.
1. Lensectomy Your old DVD Player
First thing is to get a lens for your camera phone. Make sure your old DVD player is not connected to power. Then take the screws off. This is a great way to void your warranty. It is also dangerous and you should really never do this.
Anyhow, if you went against my advice, you'll find the lens under the place where the disk goes. Take it out.
2. Prepare A Lens Mount
Ok, I'm only kidding on this one. You don't really need a lens mount, you can use duct tape if you wanna go really ghetto or mount it on some cardboard.
If you opt for the cardboard option, just make a round hole in the cardboard.
3. Mount Your Lens
Just use some duct tape (as indicated before) to mount your lens directly, use or blue Tack to hold the card mount.
4. Macro Away
WOW. This is some powerful macro. Enjoy.
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Comments
DSLR macro lens out of a Holga lens
That's a neat way to always have a macro lens with you.
I found that a Holga lens makes a very good macro attachment to a DSLR with a 50mm prime lens.
See example photos here.
CD ?
Is it working with a lens from a CD player ? Even better, is it working with a lens from a PC CD player ? It's the kind of things that are dusting on my shelves...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7847521@N08/3865905772/
There is my experiment with the lens from a cd rom drive from a pc taped over the lens of an LG Vu. The size of the lock in the picture is approx a US dime.
Yes it dos work with a PC
Yes it dos work with a PC DVD drive and to my delight my old Xbox 360 disk drive came in handy!
Broken xbox drive
Mine did too!
Cd-rom lens works
And I guess any lens from a laser product will work. But perhaps it works differently with different lenses, and phones of course.
Here is an image I took with my iPhone with a lens from an old cd-rom drive. It's actually the tip of a needle, so the magnification on this lens is kind of insane. I got a lot closer than I thought I would.
More pictures on my blog if you're interested: http://pappmaskin.no/2009/09/diyhow-to-make-your-own-iphone-macro-lens/
Added video!
Is it possible to insert video here?
I tried to film the wing of a dragonfly and the body of a fly, you can see it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPmf9doiYgY
I used a Nokia N95 which has fairly good quality video. I also hooked it up to the television and used it as a monitor, which was fantastic experience!
Yes it works with a PC CD player
In fact I tried with an old PC SCSI CD Burner lens.
Too bad my only photophone has a really ugly lens to start with, but it works indeed.
(that's an "a" on my LCD screen)
CD, no reason why not!
Yeah CD/DVD drives, should have exactly what you need inside. If it's old, obsolete and reasonably useless what you got to lose* really? Open it up and see! :)
From what I can see most of these devices have 2 or more lenses, one near the laser and one just below the disc (focusing lens). The focusing lens is for what I can see pretty useless, you'd have be be very close (touching) to the subject for it to be in-focus, the one below that is certainly more useful, but these, a long with anything like this, can be hit or miss sometimes.
*Be wary of DVD players, these have transformers and capacitors that can have potentially lethal voltage stored inside them even after being unplugged. Be careful.
"*Be wary of DVD players,
"*Be wary of DVD players, these have transformers and capacitors that can have potentially lethal voltage stored inside them even after being unplugged. Be careful."
HURTS!!! ;-) :-x
Liar Liar !!
I've been in electronics 40+ years. Since the players you're speaking of must be mains-powered by switching power supplies, the caps are no bigger than 200uF. The internal resistance of these caps yields less than a second till voltage is down to nothing. You must have forgot to unplug the thing in your rush to get the lens - ha !! What a Lark !!
The CD optical pickup macro lens
This is a great article and excellent use for old optical pickups. If you try your local TV repair shop, you may beg one of these for free - old pickups get changed a lot, and it's perhaps better than ripping your favourite DVD player apart. CD/DVD Rom drives are an even cheaper source :o)
I remember old Philips players having very neat optics which can be disassembled right down to component level and reused - including the semi-silvered mirror. It's perhaps not so easy with the plastic block type pickups? ... Maybe Laser disk players too?
I suppose people will be using bottles of CD lens cleaner to clean their optics now hehehe.
where is my old dvd player...
What a great idea!! Now to dig out the old DVD player... :-)
Cool
Awesome, i love macro..and with my 5 or 8Mpix i'm not sure what cell i shall buy yet, it will be great. well i now i hope that i didn't trow away all my old cdrooms..well i can always buy a dvdroom or a cdroom to get the lens :P
pretty neat
looks like you get some great DOF from that super tiny sensor too. This stuff looks great and I can't wait to try it.
Lens
Will this work with a CD player (not a pc cd player)
Doesn't work!
I used a lense from an old CD drive and (with the same phone as you - it's a brilliant phone) all I get is a strange blur, no matter what I do all I get is a strange blur. Which way round should the lense be? How should I focus the camera? Halp!
Great!
Wonderful. Thanks for the tip! ;-)
Bye,
Emanuele
Nice!
This is seriously RAD!!!! What a great idea and the resulting images are soooo very cool.
Autofocus Cams
I'm wondering if you guys have this working on cameras with autofocus? I'm trying to use it on my LG Shine (CU720) and it has autofocus that you cannot turn off. I tried for 30 minutes to get it working and it is just a constant blur when I have the DVD lens over my cameras lens.
Autofocus works ok for me. I
Autofocus works ok for me. I use the document setting for my shots
I'm am suprise you can't turn off autofocus? no landscape setting for the LG shine? Landscape usually give you infinite focus.
Cool
I have heard of using magnifying glass to do this but this looks amazing.
Fantastic little hack
Saw this and had to give it a go. Luckily for me, my dad has an excess of old cd rom and dvd drives so i could try this right away. Works a treat!
even worked on my oldiphone 3g which was a very pleasent surprise, since the iphone camera is shockingly bad.
Thanks for the fantastic tip.
WOW, thats perfect
I've tried with a N97 camera and a portable dvd player.
The most difficult part was to mount the lens at the phone.
A friend of mine is using a
A friend of mine is using a lens from a DVD Player
easy and cool
what an easy but still very very cool idea and solution. I like such things a lot!
Thanks!
peggy
technique
It´s really increible what the developing of technique can do with our life. In some years we will have a dvd in our contact lens, pc in a mobile and so on..The most important thing is people develop yourselves.
It works!
That is fantastic. I knew I kept my old dvd player for some reason. It only took about 15 minutes to get the lens out. Now I have a macro lens I can keep in my wallet! I was really surprised how clear the pictures are. Check this one out...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/johngunn/1251380595.jpg
Thanks.
My try :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/0108dk/3861331037/ heres what i came up with. :) thanks for the tip
It works only when you can
It works only when you can turn off the autofocus on your cellphone.The sharpness will depend on the prevailing aperture of the cellphone lens.
Which is better, using CD
Which is better, using CD lense or DVD lense?
Wow
This really work. I used a lens taken from an old computer DVD drive. I'm rather surprised the result.
See for yourself at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heanshi/sets/72157622156576754/
Simple DIY - Cool
Simple diy with great result. Nice One!!
No phone with Camera
Does it work om a phone without camera?
re: phone with no camera
That depends, if your phone supports bluetooth imaging ;)
Great Mod!
Its a great mod!!
Here is a shot I took earlier: http://phontograph.com/?p=55
It really depends on the lens.
I notice that conflikts lens is bigger than what I've been able to scrounge up. [goes off to rip apart some more CD drives..]
Cheers!
Thanks for the idea!!
Great idea! Works well with a lens from an old CD player I had.
This is really cool stuff
This is really cool stuff but I am not able to do it. I have got a lense from by DVD writer.. would that not work. Its oval in shape on one side. now I am not sure which side to use while taking photo.
different lenses
i just took out a lens of my old pc cd writer. It seems that its much smaller than those in tutorial and else. Thats how it looks (it lies on my N95 lens)
I also dont get a clear shot - all blurry. Will search for the other cd writer to break apart.
wrong lens
you are using the wrong lens...you want the bigger one under that, it will just be like a disk, not the one with a dome extruding on one side
Barely worked with a CD lens
I tried using a similar CD lens (from a CD drive dated 1996) and a much older camera phone (only 1MP). It all seemed blurry and useless until I realised the focal point was only a few millimeters I was able to take a few photos of the small print on the coin. Unfortunately having the camera that close to the object (a coin) blocked out most of the light. Was worth a try but the results were nowhere near as impressive as what others have posted here.
Your mileage may vary.
iphone tutorial
Great idea. Anyone interested in posting an iphone tutorial. I really don't want to screw up my iPhone trying to do this.
supermacro-SIM card
Thanks for the idea, but mobile macro lens has a problem: transportation.
Here is another variantion of the original desing: DVD macro lens built in a SIM card (in spanish); enjoy.
that's micro. not macro.
that's micro. not macro.
Lens too small
I got mine from my girlfriend's DVD player. It was an awesome trick but my problem is I don't have something to hold the lens at the back of my phone. I am using N82.
Too close
I took the lense from one of my broken Cd/dvd-roms. And well.. it worked. But only on extreme close-up. I want to back up a bit and take nice photos like the once you have posted here. Is the lenses on dvd players different? maybe this i had was very enhanced?
Here is a shot from a swedish coin:
![]()
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4389/picture1534180x240.jpg
laser speed cam detector
would the cd rom lens pick up a laser transmission from a speed gun
Mr Moz
help!
it's not working! i took apart an old dvd player and took the little glass lens but everything just shows up blurry! what am i doing wrong??
Awesome for the Pearl/Curve Series Blackberry
I have a few extra battery doors for the Pearl and so I decided to just glue the lens to an extra. If it weren't for the wings on the lens it would almost just sit perfectly in there.
Anyways, here is a shot of a US Quarter's "In God We Trust"
N97
just made one for my N97, after about 30 min I managed to make a frame from the rest of my DVD drive and it fits perfectly!
<< My try >>
Dear Udi, greetings from Rio!
Thanks for the excellent project suggestion. I had a lot of fun with it. Please see the whole process & results:
http://catalisando.com/macrocelular
Cheers!
- c.a.t.
www.makroshots.com - s.e.
www.makroshots.com - s.e. C902 + dvd lens
I must say this tutorial is
I must say this tutorial is really amazing. I never knew I could do that with a lens from a cd writer!!!
Veriation
I didn't have a DVD drive on hand but I came up with a veriation:
http://ppanjsouth.com/blog/?p=176
Thanks
This is an awesome howto. Thanks a lot. I taped the lens from my PS2 on my iphone 3gs and took a really detailed video of this 20 dollar bill. here's the link on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JbTEjJZEco
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