I got the inspiration to do this Instructable while reading another Instructable that accomplished the same "fish-eye" effect using a PVC reduction pipe and an entry door viewer.
There was concern in the prior Instructable about around scratching the lens so I wanted to solve that problem in my easy to build fish eye lens as well as make a version which is easy to use, remove, etc.
I decided to modify the design by using an existing camera attachment which would easily mount to the camera and comes with most Nikon lenses.
The secret to my design is to use the lens shield as the attachment platform which allows the fish eye lens to be easily attached and removed from standard lenses while enabling a hands free experience.
The lens that I am using in the shot below is a Nikon 18-105mm VR lens. It came with the kit when I bought my camera.
There was concern in the prior Instructable about around scratching the lens so I wanted to solve that problem in my easy to build fish eye lens as well as make a version which is easy to use, remove, etc.
I decided to modify the design by using an existing camera attachment which would easily mount to the camera and comes with most Nikon lenses.
The secret to my design is to use the lens shield as the attachment platform which allows the fish eye lens to be easily attached and removed from standard lenses while enabling a hands free experience.
The lens that I am using in the shot below is a Nikon 18-105mm VR lens. It came with the kit when I bought my camera.
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Signing UpStep 1: Prepare the materials
The only thing that I had to buy was the door entry viewer which was $15 and some change so I rounded to $16.
In addition to that you will need:
- 1 Entry Door Viewer - The one shown below is a 160 degree large diameter version.
- 1 scrap particle board. 3" X 3" square
- 1 scrap particle board 1.5" X 1.5" square
- The old handy duct tape approx 10" in length
- Spare Lens shield - I never use one on this lens anyway so I'm using the one that came with it.
In addition to that you will need:
- 1 Entry Door Viewer - The one shown below is a 160 degree large diameter version.
- 1 scrap particle board. 3" X 3" square
- 1 scrap particle board 1.5" X 1.5" square
- The old handy duct tape approx 10" in length
- Spare Lens shield - I never use one on this lens anyway so I'm using the one that came with it.
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Fantastic job! This makes me almost wish I hadn't spend $100+ on my fisheye =x
the point is it works, and works well. a better question is why spend $600+ when it can be done for $16
Why spend $600? Because stopped down to f/4 on my Tokina, I can do 100% crops and still have tons of sharp detail. Try that with this, and tell me how it goes. It CANNOT be done for $16 on the same level as a real fisheye. Don't compare a $300 junker to a Bugatti.
Now here's for the important bit., and why I logged in to leave this comment: The strongly negative lenses in these peep-hole devices, as well as being so inexpensive, are not blackened properly on the edges so you get that light grayish framing around the outside of your images as well as producing much lower contrast and lens flares from bright lights. (This lightness also makes it difficult to mask out later when you want a completely black circular mask for prints or displaying the image.)
Take the front of the peep-hole apart (the front ring unscrews from the main barrel) where the flat lens faces toward your subject. You will find two identical strongly negative lenses there, touching inside-face to inside-face. Use a good black magic-marker or sharpie to completely blacken the sides of the two negative-lens elements (they are both identical so there's no need to keep track of which goes in front or back). Being careful, of course, to not get any magic-marker on the polished faces of the lenses. Try to not get any dust or fingerprints (or magic-marker) on the polished lens areas. If you do, carefully clean those surfaces without destroying your intended blackening job. You might want to take the time to use some flat-black paint or marker to blacken any other internal surfaces in the barrel of the lens-housing. Reassemble. Your images will improve greatly.
If you have a "chromatic aberration" filter in your photo-editing software, you can then use it to remove the small amount of CA that these inexpensive lenses impart in your images. PTLens being a good plugin for this, but there's also some good freeware plugins for freeware editors like Irfanview and FastStone, a free plugin called CAFree by Tom Fiddaman works very well, Google for it. With these inexpensive lenses and a little editing you can get faux fish-eye images that rival some of the $2500 fish-eye Nikkor lenses for SLRs. I was amazed what kind of image quality could come from such an inexpensive lens design, especially when the lens elements aren't even achromats. This shouldn't be possible, but it is. (For the naysayers, don't knock it till you've tried it and compared the two.)
But be sure to blacken the unpolished areas of those optics inside. You'll be surprised how much the images improve.
Anyways, nice instructable, might just have a cheap xmas gift for my friend with photography skills (and as tight a budget as mine)
The crop is pretty bad though...
Maybe if I can find some nice "detective lens" to replace it...