My DIY Fisheye

I really love spring, the new buds on all the trees and bushes, the "Mother Nature" green coming out, and most of all the warmer temperatures that come with more frequent sun.

It also means that I've been spending even more time with my camera. This has lead to experimentation with different home made lenses. The picture you see here was taken with a DIY (do it yourself) Fisheye lens.

Start at a building supply house with a "peephole", like you might find in your front door. This is the thing that allows you to see into the outside world from the comfort and safety of home. I've always found the effect of the peephole kinda cool. Yes, I'm the type of annoying person who will wait until I think you are going to be looking out this hole and I will put my face up close to it... so you get a better view, you know.

Today I was doing some spring cleaning and having a "car wash" in my kitchen sink. (cue the song "Car Wash" here - depending on your age, you might go for the Rose Royce version... or maybe the Christina Aguilera N. Missy Elliot) Maybe it would be cool to take a picture of this strange moment. As I was loading it onto Flickr, I thought I might change lenses and see what the fisheye would do. (you know that all of this was MUCH more interesting than doing any actual CLEANING, right?)

Well, it isn't a perfect way to show off the fisheye, but it was cute for the experiment. You can see the first, non fisheye version here.

For my lens experiment I picked up a peephole at the previously discussed building supply house, a plastic container (in this case an Extra "Professional" gum box - aw, come on... PROFESSIONAL gum?), a 52mm UV lens filter and packing tape. Attach the peephole to one end of the gum box, attach the other end of the gum box to the lens filter, screw your new fisheye onto the camera. Voila!

Just for the heck of it, how about a picture of Fisheye Frank? To be fair, Sweet No was kinda holding his ears back... You know what? He really doesn't like that... can you believe it? I mean, not only is he one of the most photographed cats I know, but he also must suffer so much inhumane treatment at the hands of these so-called humans. Things like doing the chicken dance on two legs are just beneath him.

And because I know you're all going to run right out to the store and buy yourself the equipment for one of these cool things, I thought I would include a picture of what it all looks like.

Oh yeah also in this picture is a second lens I made very much the same way, except instead of the peephole lens, I put a child's kaleidoscope toy on it. This thing makes some freaky pictures... in fact I'm a little afraid to post them just in case someone thinks innocent Snooker has been tripping on acid or something. I took a picture of my neighbor's TV (nothing too bad about taking pictures of neighbor's windows at night is there?) and it looks trippy. Come on! His TV is HUGE. I've seen walls smaller than this guy's set. When I wanted to take a picture of a lit object at night... his TV was the first thing I thought of. See what I mean about people thinking I'm on drugs? OK, I'll go to bed now. (note to self, no more posting after midnight)


Pretty geeky, eh?