Monday, February 25, 2008

Home made Macro


P.S. I added a 100% crop picture of a stinkbug. Note the tiny false red eyes and individual lenses of the compound eyes. Please click on the photo to see an enlargement.


I finally got tired of holding the binocular objective lens up to the camera so I kludged a mount for the lens. I found the old binocular lens tube but couldn't find the lens keeper so I just super glued the lens in the barrel. Got some glue on the lens but used some acetone to remove the excess smears. I was afraid that the lens coating would be removed too but that didn't happen so all's well.

I needed to find a step-up tube to fit the camera lens tube and I found a pill bottle that was slightly larger. I wrapped some tape in the pill bottle tube so it would make a light friction fit and the macro lens wouldn't fall off if I pointed the lens downwards. The fit had to be very slight so if the camera lens retracted it wouldn't offer much resistance and cause the camera to strip some threads or burn out its motor trying to retract its lens. I wrapped the outside of the white bottle with black electrical tape because it looked better and to hold the binoc tube to the pill bottle tube. I will eventually glue both tubes together and trim off the black tape for a better cosmetic look.

Since I had two objective lens I wanted to use the second as an add on to give more magnification. I wrapped some blue electricians tape around the circumference of the extra lens, just enough so it would friction fit at the end of the binocular tube in front of the glued in lens. This effectively seems to double the magnification.

So now I can use both lens in conjunction or a single lens by itself. With both lenses I think I'm getting about 8x magnification with the point and shoot camera set at Macro and the camera lens extended to 3x zoom.

The set-up looks kludgy but it works quite well so I'm quite happy with the results. I may clean up some of the tape and use more glue but for now I need to work on attenuating the on board flash so it doesn't overexpose the subject.
















Here are a couple of photos of the center of an orchid I took using the dual lens set-up.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Those look very nice and you sure are innovative!

Ki said...

Thanks Lisa Marie. I just added a bug photo which shows better what the set up can do. Thanks for stopping by.

Catherine said...

Wow...I knew stink bugs were ugly little creatures..but I hadn't seen one up that close..they are pretty "icky" looking!Nice set ~up with the glued in lens~seems to be getting the job done well! Nice capture! Also really nice shots of the inside of the orchid..gorgeous!
I too like taking really close~up shots of my garden & flowers, & the creatures that live there! :)
Great blog you have..I will have to add you to my links list so I can check back often!
Have a great week!
Cat

Ki said...

Hi Catherine,
Thanks for the very nice comment. Aren't macros fun! I don't nearly have enough time to take photos but I hope to devote more time to do an extensive macro set. The photo of the stink bug surprised me. I didn't realize there were so many interesting structures that was part of the exoskeleton.

I will certainly check out your blog to see your photos. Thanks for visiting.