karmadillo

Macro iPhoneography

I don’t really know that much about photography and I’m not overwhelmed with spare time to sit down and educate myself. I do like to mess around a little bit though, which is why I like to play with my DSLR when possible and why I love the iPhone and it’s fun and fabulous camera apps. The iPhone, with the right apps (at the moment I heart Hipstamatic, ShakeIt & Camera+), is brilliant for quickly taking and sharing creative shots. And you can get away with lack of quality, so long as they look a bit “arty”….. ! ;)

Yesterday, browsing Flickr, I was reminded of this attempt at attaching an SLR lens to an iPhone: the Phone-O-Scope. Fun, groovy and cooed over on t’interwebs, but hardly something I was going to attempt due to lack of time & energy. The poor results don’t really inspire, either. Re-reading through that blog post did, however, alert me to the idea of using DVD/CD laser lenses to do summat. So I thought I’d just try making a little macro lens with the three lenses I could get out of our broken (well, I think it was broken. I’m sure it was. I forgot to test it. Oh well, it’s broken now!) DVD player.

So, I eagerly ripped it open, dragged out the 3 lenses, dropped them all on the floor, hunted about for them for ages, dusted them down & tried each one individually held over the iPhone camera lens with tweezers (I’m really crap at messing with this kind of stuff!). Turns out only one of the lenses was of any magnification use, but as my iPhone is already sporting a Griffin Clarify with a slightly magnifying lens, I decided to add it on to that to get a little better result.

DVD lens stuck inside Griffin Clarify. Badly.

Ten minutes later, I’d stuck it on the inside of the case’s existing lens using a bit of a white sticky address label. This prevents the lens being slid open to take normal shots, due to the curve of the iPhone, so I’ll have to remove the top section of the case to do that. It’s safer inside though, as it’s not very well stuck on at the moment – not sure how long it’ll last, to be honest, as everytime I take the case off it slides all over the place! I may superglue it to the outside at some point, as it’s slightly bigger than the existing lens so could be glued to the plastic frame it sits in – but this would be a delicate task and I’m not known for my subtlety!

So. Here are the first few pictures I took, without and with the lens mod, to test the results, with which I am quite pleased *jump jump squeeeeee* ;)