iPhone DSLR Prototype 1.0

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "Here are Photos/Pictures of my iPhone DSLR Prototype 1.0. This is my first attempt at putting together an iPhone DSLR. You might ask 'Why pair an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4 with a DSLR lens?' Why not!" Prototype or not, it's a cool project.

Comments

uh, samples?

[SoupGuru]

So, where are the goods? I mean, pics of an iPhone with a big lens strapped on are cool, I guess.... but I was kind of hoping for what the results of that unholy union are.

Re:uh, samples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, this could be done with any phone, android-based ones included. Phones have had cameras for more than a decade, why is this suddenly news because it's an iphone?

Oh that's right, Apple fanboys are being hired by Steve Jobs to rewrite history so we all believe iPhones were the first phones with a camera

Paid slashvertisement, indirectly, much?

Re:uh, samples?

[falzer]

It could be done with any phone, but it wasn't, because it's so incredibly useless and indulgent.

Re:uh, samples?

[gandhi_2]

I don't care about the goods.

Anyone who goes out of their way to say iPhone 5 times in 3 sentences is a douche.

Re:uh, samples?

[kimvette]

Well with a EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM imagine what the equivalent focal length is if you take crop factor into account. What would the crop factor be anyhow - 32.0?

Anyway this is not an SLR. SLR = Single Lens Reflex. Last I checked, there is no optical viewfinder, no pentaprism or pentamirror, nothing that would make it an SLR. In fact for a camera to be an SLR, technically speaking, interchangable lenses are not even required. What is required is a single lens provides the image for both the sensor/film and the optical viewfinder. This is more similar to the increasingly popular 4/3 format where the sensor provides the image for an EVF, but the lenses are interchangeable.

It is a neat project but it seems like it would be a royal pain in the ass to use. Your EF lens will be stuck at full-open aperture (so you will have no DOF) and while you are trying to use the manual focus on the lens, your iPhone will be trying to use its internal focus, making it very, very difficult to focus. It will also be incredibly difficult to hold steady enough to capture sharp images; the crop factor will be like using a really, really long lens and because the lens isn't powered by the iPhone you will not be able to use the lens's IS/VR/OS feature so there is no way to counteract camera shake. To make matters worse there is zero control over the iPhone's "shutter speed" so there is no way to even use the 1/(equivalent focal length) rule of thumb, so you would be restricted to using a very steady tripod.

Also, EF-S lenses would have been a better (and generally less expensive) choice as they mount closer to the sensor.
Sample images? I didn't see any.

Re:uh, samples?

[Entropius]

Especially because I can buy a real SLR for $200 used.

Why?

[OverlordQ]

'Why pair an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4 with a DSLR lens?' Why not!"

Because it wouldn't take very good pictures.

Pentaprism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the pentaprism (you know, the part that actually makes it an SLR)?

No mirror, no pentaprism=NOT AN SLR!

[Ellis D. Tripp]

This is just a bigger lens kludged onto an iPhone. Epic fail....

Where's the pics?

[teslatug]

I think sharks with frickin' lasers attached to their heads have a better chance of functioning than this thing.

Big lens != SLR

[TyFighter]

I highly doubt an iPhone has the capacity to hold a Single-lens Reflex mechanical action, nor has anyone every designed one. Do people even know what SLR means?

Re:Good for gps tagging

[jd2112]

Cheap solution if it works . The canon one is over $700.

The Canon one doesn't require a 2 year AT&T contract + expensive data plan.

Re:Is a SLR, yes it is.

[sjwt]

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and very wrong.

That is what is called an 'Lens'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_lens

And he has attached the 'Lens' to a 'camera phone'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_phone

an SLR is a camera that has various mechanical moving parts, that allow you to split the same light that will be hitting the film or sensor, so that you can see this with your own eye, and then the millisecond you hit the shutter button, the Reflex mirror, jumps out of the way, and the shot is taken with almost the exact same light you where seeing that was sent to your eyes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-lens_reflex_camera

This is just a phone that might as well be taped to a large magnifying glass, there are no SLR parts in the lens of a SLR camera.

Re:NOT DSLR!!

[Mr. Freeman]

"Good point but the terminology is kind of debatable"
No, it's not.

Yes, this camera uses a single lens and yes, it's digital. So does that $20 piece of junk point-and-shoot digital camera that you can buy at walmart. By your logic every single modern day camera is actually a DSLR because they use one lens and are digital.

"A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that uses a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder on the back of the camera."
The iphone does not use a mechanical mirror system and pentaprism and therefore is not a DSLR, period. There's no debate here. It's simply not a DSLR camera.

From the TFA:
"Now by no means would I consider myself a professional photographer. Heck… I am by would I even consider myself an amateur photographer. The truth is I really know nothing about photography. " Link: http://iphonedslr.com/blog/archives/42fb

By his own admission, he doesn't really know what he's doing or why this is simply a bad idea.

Re:you were slashdotted

[netsharc]

Another tip is, don't use a frigging uncompressed 4 bytes-per-pixel BMP format for your header image!

Morons...