Pedro’s Hacks!

Spark’s good pal Pedro Mendes is on the program this week with his homemade digital camera hacks. These are add-ons you can create with inexpensive items from home and the hardware store. Here are Pedro’s own DIY instructions and example photos.

Hack #1: Make a Fisheye Lens (as seen here) All you need for this effect is a $10 peephole for your front door, which you can get at any hardware store. I used a plastic pop bottle cap to attach it to my digital camera’s lens. Make a hole in the bottle cap and then screw your peep hole in the hole. Place the bottle cap over your lens (on my camera, the cap fits perfectly over the end of the lens.) The trick to make it work is zooming way in and usually setting your camera to macro. Here’s what the final product will look like. And Click here to see my pics.

Hack #2: Adding a pseudo pinhole lens to your digital camera:
If you have a regular point and shoot digital camera like me, this hack won’t really turn your camera into a pinhole as it still has a lens*. But this does create an awesome diffusion effect that makes for really unpredictable results. I cut a small circle out of the bottom of a pop can to fit inside a pop bottle lid, which fits over my digital camera’s lens. I then painted the inside of both with black paint to avoid any light leakage. The trick of this hack is to make a tiny pinhole in the tin can. Once this is over your camera lens, zoom way in and you’ll probably have to use a nighttime, long exposure for the best effect. Here’s what it should look like when you’re finished. Or click here to see my pinhole pics.
*if you have a digital SLR camera then you can create a real pinhole camera simply by making a tiny hole in your lens cover and using it instead of the camera’s lens.

So there you have it, Pedro’s hacks. The next step is to try these out and then add your photos to our flickr pool. Or post about your own household hacks. Maybe you’ve turned your paper shredder into a pasta maker? Or made springloaded chopsticks with a clothespin?

Post about your favorite hack (or about Pedro’s hacks) and your comments could appear on the show.

Ross

Posted September 19, 2007 at 4:24 PM

It seems that the sensors in digital cameras and webcams is sensitive to infrared, so the manufacturers include an IR filter to get decent visible-light pictures. Minor surgery to the lens to remove the IR filter and include a filter to block visible light converts the cam to IR. The visible light filter can be as simple as a couple of layers of exposed, developed colour film, i.e. the end of the roll. Google “homemade infrared camera” – many entries.
Still putting my lens back together! Oops.

Mauricio Quintana

Posted September 26, 2007 at 3:25 PM

Really enjoyed the digital camera hacks discussion on the radio today. I went right to the spark website to check it out!! I am a person who likes to experiment with photo effects, and the idea of calling them hacks really made me laugh!

An alternate to the door pephole, if your camera lens is large, is to use a stainless steel pot cover and take your picture pointing at the inside part to the lid and aligning the lid to the subject you want to photograph. This works reasonably well as you can either hold the lid by the handle with your other hand or attach it somewhere. (just make sure the lid is clean!)

Allan Waters

Posted September 26, 2007 at 4:00 PM

I’m looking for a radio hack. What would it take to construct an FM radio that would switch automatically among a selection of stations pre-set by the user in order to avoid talk and provide a continuous stream of music?

Travis Allison

Posted September 27, 2007 at 4:02 PM

Great bit! I’m going to try the fish-eye for sure.

That reminded me that I posted a how-to of a home-made macro for my DSLR on Flickr. I used a $4 jeweller’s loupe and an old lens cap.

Here’s the pictures of the setup and some examples:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whybesubtle/sets/72057594051271168/

Thanks for a great show everybody.
Nora: great to have you back on the air regularly!

Nathan Waddell

Posted September 27, 2007 at 5:36 PM

On the show you mentioned that Pedro had a whole bunch of these- I hope he gets to come back each week or so with a new one- I had fun experimenting with some old lenses I had kicking around.