fbpx

DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

Submit A Story

How to make a DIY camera lens using a magnifying glass and cheap macro bellows

by Leave a Comment

If you ever want to experiment with optics, making your own lenses (or adapting old ones to fit on current cameras) is definitely a good way to do it. Lenses now have gotten pretty complex, though, with elements acting in pairs or groups that are often too complicated to try to reassemble in your own custom housing (especially if it’s held together with gaffer tape).

In this video, though, the folks at Fotodiox show us how we can make our own lens using nothing more than some macro bellows and a magnifying glass. This is about as simple as a lens gets and it’s absolutely not going to give you the same results as an expensive GM lens (not even close), but it’s a lot of fun to experiment with and can produce some pretty neat in-camera effects.

[Read More…]

How to make your own lenses with a cake mold and epoxy

by 1 Comment

Ursula Ferrara has shown us some of her unusual and creative DIY projects before. And this time, this talented lady has raised DIY to a new level. Using only cake molds and some epoxy resin, she made her own large-format lenses and took some photos using them. She shares her process in a short video, so you can try it, too.

[Read More…]

How to easily convert your kit lens into a macro lens

by 3 Comments

Are you looking for an affordable but also electronic macro lens? Or maybe you have an old kit lens, that’s just sitting around, collecting dust since your last upgrade?

Well, then read on, because in this article I am going to share one cool hack that will allow you too transform almost any kit or standard zoom lens into a capable macro lens!

And I am not talking about reversing the lens or mounting it on extension tubes, we’re actually going to convert the lens for good. And it’s incredibly simple.

[Read More…]

How bored are you from 1 to this: Making a working lens out of Lego

by Leave a Comment

It can get a bit monotonous in isolation, especially if you’re out of work right now. But hey, there’s always something to do, and Mathieu Stern has some crazy ideas and makes them real. After the crappy lens made from toilet paper, he now turned to Lego and made another working lens. And unlike the previous one, this DIY lens actually does a pretty good job!

[Read More…]

How I built my own DIY wide-angle macro lens

by 9 Comments

The wide-angle paradox

As we know, wide angle lenses show a larger field of view and therefore make things appear smaller and appear further away than they are. Which contradicts the concept of macro photography, where we want our subject to be projected onto the sensor at a magnification ratio of at least 1.0x. So how can we combine a wide angle perspective and macro macro-capabilities?

The concept of wide-angle macro photography is not exactly new and there are other photographers out there, who built their own super-wide macro lenses. There even are a couple lenses on the market that provide 1.0x at a15mm focal length, but I much rather an interesting DIY project than spending 500$ on a niche lens.

[Read More…]

Adapting industrial lenses for extreme macro photography

by 2 Comments

If you ever visited some industrial surplus shops, very often you would see some cameras and lenses used in industrial automation. But you probably do not know that these lenses can have very high optical performance and features we want: high resolving power, large image circle, low distortion, and often very long working distance compared to some of the other lenses we use.

[Read More…]

How to convert almost any standard zoom lens into a macro lens

by 10 Comments

Are you looking for an affordable but also electronic macro lens? Or maybe you have an old kit lens, that’s just sitting around, collecting dust since your last upgrade?
Well, then read on, because in this article I am going to share one cool hack that will allow you to transform almost any kit or standard zoom lens into a capable macro lens!
And I am not talking about reversing the lens or mounting it on extension tubes, we’re actually going to convert the lens for good. And it’s incredibly simple.

[Read More…]

How to mod an old 35mm SLR lens to make your own DIY “Anamorfake” lens

by Leave a Comment

Anamorphic lenses have become very popular again, ever since somebody realised you could mount one to a DSLR and then stretch the footage out in post. But anamorphic lenses are not cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination. They do produce a very unique look, though, that a lot of people find attractive.

In this video from Todd Blankenship at Shutterstock, we see how to modify an older 35mm SLR lens to produce a similar look to an anamorphic lens.

[Read More…]

Recent Posts