Making a macro lens and a light for the iPhone
What do geeks do when they have a little free time on their hands? They accessorize! On Sunday I found myself wanting to play with my iPhone’s camera. Since getting the iPhone, and even more since I because posting mobile photos to Flickr, I’ve wanted to try out new ways of distorting, enhancing, and affecting the images capture by the iPhone.
The make-shift macro lens
A few years ago one of my digital cameras just decided it didn’t want to work anymore. It wouldn’t turn on. Actually, to be more accurate, the thing wouldn’t turn off. Turns out that there was a small screw inside that busted up the innards. No idea how that happened.
Well, like any self respecting geek I kept the camera’s body around for a few years always thinking I’d do something with it eventually. You know, the same way car enthusiasts keep around old Corvette parts thinking one day they’ll rebuild those. That’s me with electronics - only, I’m horrible at rebuilding things, but fantastic at ripping them apart.
I figured that inside of this extraordinarily complex device I would surely find some way to manipulate the way the iPhone took photos. Turns out, I ended up with a fairly decent macro lens for the iPhone.
The macro lens on the iPhone
Obviously this thing isn’t built for the road, but it works in a pinch. I just took some double-sided tape, wrapped the lens from the camera’s eye-piece in it, then used a paper clip to fasten it to the iPhone. Yeah, I know, prize winning engineering indeed.
I am not sure how I’ll end up using this, but I’m glad that I know have it in my bag should a reason to use it arise. It does a fairly good job and I’m happy with the outcome. I’m looking forward to finding a way to build a fish-eye lens now - and I’m open to suggestions on how exactly to pull that off.
The obnoxiously large light
The iPhone doesn’t have a built-in flash. Some mobile phones with cameras built-in actually have a pretty bright flash, but the iPhone has none, zip, zilch. I’ve never really cared about that, but I can see why when people switch from a phone that has it would complain.
Last year at SXSW’s keynote featuring Will Wright’s demonstration of SPORE (which has a release date of September 7, 2008 that I’m excited about) Adobe graciously gave away some odd little lights. Each light has a small handle on the side that lets you crank it up to power the light. Pretty neat little gizmo, so I fastened it to a mount that came with my old iSight and voila, instant light for the iPhone. Here is a photo of it.
This isn’t anything special, of course, and the results are a bit meh. But I thought it good enough to use when I might need it. The iPhone is terrible in low-light conditions so anything helps.
Conclusion? The lens is going in my laptop bag and the light will probably stay home.
Update March 21, 2008 — I’ve now recorded a video demonstration of the macro lens in action.
This is the 500th post to cdevroe.com.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Neat hack Colin. How about an outdoors pic with before and after so we can see the difference.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Paul “Stammy” Stamatiou: It shall be done sir… watch my Flickr account.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
[...] Making a macro lens and a light for the iPhone [...]
February 19th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Where’s the video of this in action?
February 20th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Rob: I’ll do one soon.
Click to play this video.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Click to play this video.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Or, Rob, it could be…
Click to play this video.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Click to play this video.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:23 am
LOL!! You guys are hilarious, which reminds me - “must install Viddler video comment plugin!”
Anyway, nice hack Colin - found it via Flickr.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Awesome stuff! Will have to try it when I get my iPhone!
February 26th, 2008 at 4:26 am
[...] zum selbstgemachten Objektiv und damit zu Colin Devroe. Nicht weltbewegend und ähnlich schräg befestigt wie das Heim-Kino auf dem Klo von Max hat Colin [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am
[...] este hack han conseguido dotar al iPhone de la capacidad de hacer fotografÃas macro, consiguiendo unos [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 5:24 am
[...] know that this if more of an iPhone hack rather than an iPod Touch hack, but it was too good not to mention. Colin Devroe was feeling a [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
[...] can download, I’m afraid. but if you have an old digital camera you want to pull apart, then here is where you can go to find out how to “convert” your iPhone camera so it has a macro [...]
March 9th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
[...] Esta modificação é simples e, embora feita para um iPhone, é perfeitamente possÃvel adaptá-la …. [...]
March 12th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
[...] This isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone take macro photographs with an iPhone, but it is the most involved. [...]
March 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
[...] following my post about the iPhone macro lens my site nearly “went down” because of using up too much bandwidth. Shortly after that [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
great macro lens, man!
i have been using an old wide-angle/fisheye lens on my iphone.
check out my dog photo on my site.
http://www.justwhatisee.com
cheers!
greg
March 25th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Greg: Very nice photolog. Consider me subscribed!
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:17 am
[...] topics included: Viddler (of course), the Viddler API, being a geek, the iPhone macro lens (video demo), my background in computers, a special announcement gets thrown in, and much more. All [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
[...] voir comment s’y prendre, les instructions sont disponibles sur le site de Colin Devroe, en [...]