$11 Super Wide Angle Digital Camera

Add a 160 degree wide angle lens to your existing digital camera for $11. This was based on ideas from the following webpage: http://aggregate.org/DIT/peepfish/

Step 1 Go to your favorite hardware store, and buy a wide angle door viewer.

You should be able to find one of these at any hardware store. I got mine at Home Depot for about $11. The key attributes that you're looking for is the largest possible "eye hole". There are a bunch of these door viewers that have very small openings, and they won't produce a very good image. Get the one I'm showing here, and it will work great. The opening is just about the size of the lens on my old Canon S230.

Comments

[Technomage]

I tried this over the weekend. It works great. I used the idea on my 300D SLR.
As there was a lot of bright lights I got a ton of flaring. Check out some of the pictures below.

There are good SLR instructions here. Short version below:

I had drilled a hole in a 55mm lens cap ($4.95)
I used the same peephole from homedepot and hot glued it to the lens cap. ($7.50 and $1)
I attached the lenscap to my 28-90 Sigma lens (it has macro)
Pictures where best around 50-70 mm not in macro mode and with manual focus
Done.

This was my first instructable project!

[RUMCYCO]

Nice work mate ;)

[Ninzerbean]

I went to your link - these speak to me also! They are really cool - use them for the art work on CD's - you can buy round labels for them, glossy is best. Wonderful!

[poetapex]

Hey good job.

[PetervG]

Okay so how do I do this...

[Ghost Wolf]

LAME! Check out mine! It's bigger than yours lol

[maito]

ZAS! en toda la boca

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/diy-fish-eye-lense-19-11-2009/

[Ghost Wolf]

Translation: ZAP! whole mouth

[Phoghat]

In the OLD days, we would find an extra lens cap and cut a hole in the center big enough to hold the door viewer. Just snap it on and you're good to go.

[jenniec]

it goes on your stock lens - i have the canon Xti - and it works awesome.
way less of a risk ahah just buy this

[PetervG]

The door viewer wont fit on a DSLR..

[linuxrules]

Hey bud, take a look at this image: http://duolian.smugmug.com/Other/Faux-Fisheye/gear/14344129_JjoU6-O.jpg

[Pepealej]

Zoom in

[buffysissy1]

I also tried this with a point and shoot but epoxied another lens on top, a lens I got out of a cheap "panoramic camera", just epoxied the edges and got a nice effect. Will post pix soon.

[buffysissy1]

The large door viewer seems the way to go with these projects.

[mg0930mg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB7rnAY55UM

Thanks!

[Funguystuff]

thanks for this instructable man, i knnew that saving this door "eye" would help me someday, and now i did. you should add to the key words of this intstructable "skate" because this is how sk8 videos are shot and that was what i was looking for.
Gr8 Instructable!

[yerfdog123]

my camera has a square shaped around the lens, will this still work?

[mista.v]

You know, if you measure out the DoF properly, you won't need to crop this bit out.

[sjoobbani]

you should use some kinda tube, and maybe some tape, without using the sticky side on your cam. to make it removable.

[tommyskate]

iv got this yes video camera its a mini camera wat do i no and i want one for my skating

[Scottishsamurai_545]

I found your project a couple weeks ago, linking off a DIY kaleidoscope lens project. Most of the time I work with a full-size camera, and had never really thought of using a door viewer with the lens on a small camera. I gave your project a try with a cheap point & shoot I have, and the results were impressive. I then figured out a way of using a piece of plumbing hardware to adapt the viewer to my bridge camera, which doesn't do too bad of a job of making fish-eye pictures. Good work!

[say88got]

hey do any of u now how to make one wit out a peephole

[oldbastardjoe]

i made one but i sawwed off some excess so i wouldnt have to zoom as much. if you do the same make sure no glass gets cut as o my first attempt i cut the eye glass and it doesnt work.

[bowmaster]

If you could find a 180 degree door viewer you would have a fish eye lens

[Trebawa]

At Home Depot they have 200° viers right next to the 160° ones. I got one and will post pictures soon.

[Runeshai]

That's pretty sweet. Is there a way you could make them the regular rectangle photo shape, instead of the circle, or would that be too hard to do in-camera with this rig?

[inquisitive]

Lovely pictures! Your cats are so cute! The coloring on one looks like split bangs and the other one seems to have an eye patch-this will be fun to play with. Thanks!

[X_D_3_M_1]

kool kat. hes so cute

[dimockn]

Used Nero PhotoSnap to correct the distortion as shown. Takes away some of the charm ? :)

[locofocos]

Could you tell me how to do that? I know how to do the thing where you take a picture of a flat surface at an angle, the use the proportion/crop function and it looks straight, but how would you do that with this?

[JamesRPatrick]

N-Game!

[eyballer9]

its a wide angle or a fish eye lense you can get them for all kinds of cameras it makes the shot wider

[locofocos]

I know that, but can you use Photoshop to take the round, wide-angle pictures and turn them into normal square ones (like shown above)?

[Sidney Floyd]

definitley the first looks so much cooler whats the point of a wide angle lenseif theres no hokey ring of distortion?

[slacy]

The reason this doesn't look as interesting as you might expect is that all the objects in frame are too far from the camera. Take a skew-angle close-up picture and correct that. I think you'll get a much better feel for how weird things get. BTW, if the purpose of PhotoSnap is to stitch panoramas, then you'd expect it to look "normal" wouldn't you?

[zwild1]

If you remove the barrel on the fisheye, (hacksaw) you no longer have to worry about the "tunnel vision"

[iman]

i like your cat lol

[slacy]

Thanks! She's word renouned now! (BTW, my gallery actually has pictures of 2 different cats. Can you tell them apart?)

[Bob7k]

hahaa, cats are awesome! i have 2 cats, hamsters and a pair of rats, im a pet freak, but then again, care is split up over 6 people, but only i care for the hamsters and rats