Here’s a great example of a cheap mod that gets professional results. This ring flash cost roughly $14 all together, and they got to eat some fruit salad in the process. The parts list is pretty easy and can almost be figured out just by looking at the picture. A plastic bowl, an aluminum can, some foil, and a lens adapter. This is very nice and much easier than our last ring light post.
Since we rely on you, our loyal readers, to supply the tasty projects that we thrive upon, we felt this writeup about how to photograph LEDs could be very useful. Photographing them can be quite difficult at times, they throw off the standard settings on your camera pretty easily. EMSL takes us through all the settings for best results. While you’re brushing up on your photography skills, you might want to consider making a flash ring, or some kind of macro lens. Now go take some awesome pictures and submit your projects.
[Chris] wanted to do some macro photography, but found the price tag off putting. He was looking at roughly $800 for a decent macro lens. Instead, he decided to build his own. He wanted to build a lens that could be removed and used just like his normal lenses. He picked up a standard Canon AF lens for $10 to start with. He has posted detailed steps on how he modded it to work, and you can see the results are quite stunning. Great job [Chris]. If you want to try your hand at macro photography but don’t think you can pull of a job like this, you might want to check out the pringles can macro lens.
For those who enjoy photography, a ring light is a nice tool to have. Being hackers, making your own seems only logical. This writeup will take you through the process of making one from fiber optics for super cheap. They basically gutted some fiber optic toys and strapped them to the lens. Sure there was a little more work involved, but that’s the gist of it. You may recall some more in depth fiber optic ring lights using LEDs or cold cathodes that we covered before.
[via Hacked Gadgets]
Here’s an odd little footnote we found while perusing the Comic Tools blog. [Matt Bernier]’s blog is dedicated to drawing and inking tutorials for comic artists. He uses a lot of example photographs that involve both hands. This week, at the bottom of his post on cleaning brushes, he included a photo to illustrate how he takes all of these point of view shots. The camera is strapped securely to his head using an old lanyard. He can see the display and access the controls on the back. After composing his shot, he just sets the timer, and you get a picture of what the process looks like from his perspective. Sure, it looks silly from this angle, but it really helps out the posts.
The camera lens on the iPhone is much like any other cameraphone lens in the fact that the lens has a fixed minimum and maximum focus length. If you want to get a little closer to your subject, you just might want to give [eastrain’s] macro camera mod a try.
According to [eastrain] both first and second generation iPhone cameras have a screw type focus ring that has been glued to infinity from the factory. This was probably set so that 99% of your photos were roughly in focus.
Gaining access to the camera lens requires the disassembly of your phone and will undoubtedly void any type of warranty you may have had. Once the lens is in view you will need to break the 2 glue points that hold the lens at its current position.
Using needle nose pliers you can then rotate the lens counter clockwise to increase the zoom or clockwise to decrease it. Enabling the built in camera app allows you to see in real time your changes. When you’re satisfied, just put everything back together. Of course the next step should be an externally mounted ring to allow manual zooming on the fly.
We’ve seen numerous products geared toward tracking the location and activities of your pets, two in the last month, but we feel sure you can make more functional devices than those you can purchase. Let’s look at a few and consider our options.
