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How to easily convert your kit lens into a macro lens

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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.

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

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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!

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How I built my own DIY wide-angle macro lens

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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.

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Adapting industrial lenses for extreme macro photography

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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This Youtuber made a real, working lens using sand and rocks

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We’ve seen some interesting DIY lenses, like those made from crap, an iceberg, or 3D-printed components. But have you ever seen a lens made from scratch? And by that, I mean sand, rocks, and metal turned into a lens? Well, Andy George of How To Make Everything took DIY to a whole new level. He combined raw sand, rocks, and metal with his knowledge and experience and made a working camera lens entirely from scratch!

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This camera lens was made from an iceberg

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Photographer and filmmaker Mathieu Stern enjoys buying, modifying and even making his own weird lenses. He dreamt of his latest project for two years and now he’s finally made it – a lens made of ice. He traveled all the way to Iceland to be able to turn his idea into reality.

Making the ice lens came with a lot of challenges, but Mathieu managed to overcome them. He kindly shares with DIYP some photos and videos he took with this ice lens, as well as the story of how he made it. And it’s all really cool (no pun intended)!

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