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Macro Lens from a Pringles Can
isharq writes "In a cool little feat of extremely low-tech hardware hacking, Photocritic has created a macro lens out of a Pringles can. According to the article: "with less than £1 worth of equipment, a little bit of sweat and tears, you can build yourself a surprisingly good macro lens". The results are astonishing."
And the chips aren't half-bad either.
Don't piss in my ear and tell me its raining!
Next, you are going to tell me that you can make some sort of 802.11 antenna with a pringles can.
And whats with this "do it yourself" building projects? My fingers are too greasy and fat to perform such feats.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Maybe they should have taken the money they saved on their macro lens and upgraded their server/connection.
Their server seems to have been reduced to rubble. Anyone got a mirror?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What he really built was an extension tube to allow an ordinary
lens to focus closer.
http://www.networkmirror.com/AodpyYLsgUIgSIiH/www. photocritic.org/2005/macro-photography-on-a-budget /index.html
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
From what I know, that's typically how macro lenses are done.
My father had all manner of steel-tubes and a billows arrangement for his macro setup. Ultimately, it was his same 50mm objective lens which was on the front of the camera.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...was probably constructed of a Pringles can, too.
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
Most lenses are designed to focus on things in the FAR range - ~10+ feet. Macro lenses can focus on things very close or very small - in the 1' range.
So if you plan on shooting yet another flower and calling it 'art', you need a macro lens.
Note that many recent digitals offer moderate macro functions and do not require a macro lens.
Actually a true macro lens usually has additional lens elements to correct for various defects resulting from the decreased subject to lens distance. Also they stop down more. While a 'normal' lens can stop down to F16 (sometimes F22), a true macro will go down to F32 or even F45 for greater depth of field.
A macro lens is capable of taking pictures of things in much more detail than a normal lens. Think of a steel countertop at a moderate distance it would look much like an ordinary camera picture of it would, but if you look a littlem ore carefully even from a few feet away you can usually see scratches in the surface. A macro lens allows you to focus closer than the usual minimum focal distance so you can capture that detail. Normally you'd only be able to get so close and then it'd just get blurry instead of clearer macro lenses are designed to overcome that limitation.
Otherwise, it's a swell idea.
Slashdot, where everyone is so american that no one has any idea what Freedom of Speech is, and how it doesn't apply to private websites you read in your underwear and never pay for.
...when I show you how to construct: ... from a Pringles can.
- A working fusion reactor
- A 3" mortar
- A simple teleportation device
AND
- A cat
http://www.photocritic.org.nyud.net:8090/2005/macr o-photography-on-a-budget/
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."
Focusing distance is not sufficient to qualify a lens as a macro. There are close focusing lenses that are not macro, and there are macro lenses with long focal lengths that don't focus particularly close.
A true "macro" lens is defined as a lens that allows for at least 1:1 reproduction of the subject image on the recording media. For the sake of simplicity, we'll talk film. If you photograph an object that is 1/2" across, and the resulting recorded image on the film is also 1/2" in size, you're shooting macro. A "macro lens" is one that is capable of rendering at least this 1:1 reproduction.
Unfortunately, many camera/lens manufacturer have abused the term to mean "focuses at a (slightly) closer distance than a normal lens at an identical focal length, so that when printed to standard 4x6 the image is life-size." This, of course, is regardless of the reproduction ratio of the lens. A rather silly definition, really, since any reasonable frame at any magnification can be cropped and enlarged to "life size" up to a point before quality degrades enough to become unworkable.
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
You're corrent that he didn't build a lens. That misrepresetation is the editor/submitters fault. It's entirely possible neither of them knew any better.
I want to point out that any vitriol anyone needs to spew about this should be directed to the editor himself, and not confused with comments about this guy's work. He built a cool hack, turning several pieces of cheap equipment into one piece of expensive equipment in the finest tradition of geekiness.
Just because someone mischaracterised his work doesn't make his work of lesser intrinsic value. It's not what we were told it was when we clicked on the article, but it's pretty cool in and of itself. Let's not let that get lost.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
What this guy built is an extension ring, not a macro lens. He used an existing lens, he chose non-macro lens, a macro lens would provide more precise focusing and flat focal plane but otherwise would work the same.
What he built is called extension ring, it fits between the camera and the lens and allows extremely close focusing of any lens. Extension rings go for $20-$40, sometimes you can find them used for less, or you can by a set of 3 for around $100. Factory-made rings usually preserve automatic functions of the lens, at least aperture control, sometimes even autofocus. They are usually much shorter than the pringles can, anywhere from 9mm to 45mm (and you can stack them).
So this little contraption does save you some bucks, just not as much as you might have hoped if you read the title and priced a macro lens.
Yeah. Just like when someone points out that you can build an antenna for wireless networking with a Pringles can, it's all a big scam because you already needed to have a working computer and a wireless infrastructure, how lame. What a rip-off, you can't build the whole network with just the pringles can?
We should all feel greatly deceived when there are any pre-requisites for a DIY project. I'm still waiting to get instructions on making a supercomputer completely out of a pumpkin, but no luck so far.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The RIAA has not granted you a license to use your CD in this manner. Why do you hate America??
The cameraman then asked "which eye?"
John