DIY cameraphone macro lens requires one old DVD player, zero tech savvy
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Aug 25th 2009 6:35PM
posted Aug 25th 2009 6:35PM
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That's actually pretty neat.
so does that mean if u tape a XBOX 360 Lens u get red ringtone of death on your phone?
Most decent smartphones already have a Macro function, including two out of the 3 I have on my table right now.
Anyway , I 'm gonna try this stuff out and see what happens if I had the lens AND activate the macro function.
Who knows, maybe it will turn my phone into an electronic microscope.
I just have a doubt: are we sure that this is not a nasty plot by DVD player makers to make us tear down a few 100 of 1000s players and get themselves out of the recession's sales doldrums by selling new ones to the morons who belived a stupid story fished out of the internetz?
I meant: "... if I ADD the lens AND activate the macro function" (obviously)
that Ericsson Cybershot can actually take decent Macros without that mod, besides this wouldn't be that impressive if you didn't already have a good quality camera on your phone
The griffin clarifi has this same function I think
The Griffin Clarify does this, but the lens they use does not do very much. The macro improvement is just noticeable - no where as dramatic as the photos in this posting.
like..wow
That's pretty smart.
Um... o_O
Tres cool
Maybe I can salvage the lens from my smoldering DuraBrand DVD player...
If you got that reference, stop reading engadget and get some exercise. (that includes me)
Brilliant!
Well son of a bitch, i'm impressed.
i think this is just an exploitation of the aperture phenomenon. i'm not sure it necessarily needs to be a DVD lens, it just needs to be a hole.
try it for yourself, poke a very small pinhole into a index card and look through it. everything will look much sharper, especially if you normally wear glasses.
You do realize that the image is not being cropped, right?
He's referring to aperture as in the amount of light being allowed through the lens to the sensor
nope, that doesn't make any sense. If you look at the size of the lens he is taping on, it is pretty big in comparison to the lens of the camera that is already in place. The amount of light being let into the lens is only slightly smaller than the preivous amount of light *if* we are talking about an iris that is wide open. Basically if you were to get an aperture smaller than the one in the camera, it would have to be a pinprick... a very very light pinprick.
I'm not impressed.
More like blown away.
*clap clap clap* hats off. now, i need to find a broken dvd player.
Anyone brave enough to see what a blu-ray lens will do?
I'm wondering (if this actually works) why companies don't insert this into their own products...?
because people don't take macro pictures all of the time
That really is cool. Maybe we'll see slider lens on future phone cameras to achieve this result. Seems like it would be easy and inexpensive.
How do a lens from a CD player work? How about HD-DVD?
I doubt the effect would be much different.
this is freakin sweet
Im so going to give that a try
30 bob, if I'm not mistaken.
This one's great since I really love Macro Shots! I just hope that I could find a broken DVD for me to get that lens!
Will the lens from a one of those early dvd drives off a pc work?
No luck with the lens off a crappy old CD player.
I meant: " ...if I ADD the lens AND activate the macro functions" (of course)
does it HAVE to be a dvd player? or will a normal cd player work too?
Finally, a use for my HD-DVD player!
For your's maybe. Mine is doing a perfectly nice job of occupying a spot in my equipment rack thank you. If I did this, I'd have an empty spot to worry about.
Misspelled savvy
Another question please, can I use a broken DVD Rom?
I've done this with the "lens" from a cheap, small laser pointer. Exact same results, but a little less convenient. I had to put tape directly over the lens and had a problem with getting finger prints on things.
Paul A Chapel will be so happy about this. Now he'll be able to show his minuscule member to Steve Jobs.
+
I fear that it will not work. And did not dare try.
Cool, except that I don't want a lens taped to my phone. Did everybody suddenly forget that they have real cameras that are designed to take real macro shots?
No tape required.
Except it's a lot easier to carry an extra lens around with you to bust out than to always have your camera.
Especially if you're a girl, and you have a purse that you keep things you might need, like medicines/bandages/other things people never expect me to have in it.
Geez guys, this is amazing. I took some photos with it using an LG Dare, and the results were crazy awesome.
A picture I took of a quarter is here: http://spud100.deviantart.com/art/Quarter-134752338
Those coins look fancier then ours.
themshill has got it! ;>
I might add though, look for a lens inside the unit, not the focusing lens (the one directly below the disc), this is close to unless..
Some lenses are hit or miss unfortunately, but what you got to lose if you've got an old and obsolete DVD player collecting dust, give it a go, see if it happens!
Meh.... harvest DVD players for the lens, leave the HD-DVD players to be harvested for their lasers.
Can someone expain in laymans terms what this guy even did? So he basically put his lens from a dvd player in front of his cellphone's camera lens?
So like if I wanted to improve the quality of images from my cellphone ill do the same??
Yes, that's what you do. Just take the lens out from the depths of your old DVD player and tape it in front of the camera lens.
It only works as a macro lens though, it won't clarify other pictures. Only ones within a small distance are clear. Everything else is a blur.
It doesn't make the images clearer.
It's like adding a magnifying glass infront of the lens.
Two pounds? It doesn't LOOK that heavy. :D
I put 5 of the lenses on top of each other and I was actually able to photograph atoms.
Finally, a mod that isn't a fake.
tried it and it worked... even on a crappy iPhone! I mean like really worked, as advertised. Brilliant
HC... yes, that's what you do... easy as that
Heh, my c905 can already take those kind of pictures without needing the lens. And yes, I am aware that I paid 250 bucks for it. Damn worth it. Interesting to try on an old phone though. =P
You want cheap and easy - you can't beat this solution - no duct tape required....
http://bit.ly/xEW2i
It has a nice vignetting touch to it
Wow does that mean the end of Mr blurry cam?
You can use a similar trick for your digital cameras as well.
A magnifying glass in front of your digital camera will allow you to shorten your focal length to Macro lengths and also you can use your zoom too.
I've gone that route and also used a reverse mounted 50mm SLR lens
i am like soooo glad that finally people are having positive thoughts about mother gaia and throwing away products that are like, soooo over-thrown-outable, you know because people can take a thing like this that is like totally simple and then like, do some something with it like simply affixing it to another thing that is maybe not as simple, and then when you take the not as simple thing plus the simple thing you get another thing that really can't by its own definition be simple since it's a subset of the union of a simple and non simple thing, yet the simplicity of the action is simple and that's what makes it simple. anyways mother gaia shines down a single tear when we read articles like this, but it's not the single tear of sadness that you may have thought, since tears are a product of crying and that is often associated with a negative state, in the form of many energies by especially qi engergy, and my point in so stating this predicament is that the tear is in fact a single tear of happiness, because mother gaia is no longer forced to live in a galactic trailer park, but instead a very fancy sort of house that completes an otherwise horrible metaphor, one in which she can photograph the patterns of her leather couch and post it on her facebook profile, of which everyone should be on the friends list. because it's mother gaia, and she pays the rent, and the rent is paid with not dying from solar flares attacking our faces like rabid zombie dogs from the sun with solar spikes. however i did have an initial issue with the claim that some of the best mods are simple, with the requirement that they work, as it seems to imply a subclass of complicated mods that don't work which can still be cool, which if so implied, is silly.
uh.... what?
... the hell?