Saturday, January 21, 2006

homemade pringles can macro adapter

The post over at photocritic about macro photography on a budget really grabbed my attention, and was sitting on the back burner in my mind for a while. You may have seen it slashdotted or digged. Well, I was at Safeway yesterday when I came across the chips aisle and remembered the article. I grabbed a can of pringles.

I followed the somehwat less than helpful tutorial above in creating my very own pringles can macro adapter tube, and managed to get some decent shots - plus I learned a lot about the camera and the way lenses work.

I will try not to bore you with the details, but here goes. I started by making sure that the lens would fit in the pringles can. I've heard rumors that the 50mm lenses (both canon and nikon) fit just about perfectly in the can, but since I only have the kit lens which is the 18-70mm f3.5-4.5, I had to make do with what I had. After all, this is supposed to be a hack job, right? The mount for the lens hood fit *very* snugly at the opening of the pringles can, so I just left it at that.

	Camera Cover I got to break out the dremel at this point and hollow out the cover for the camera that protects the camera when no lens is attached. I sanded it down on the inside a bit more after I shot the picture to make sure it was completely smooth and there were no stray plastic shavings.
	Cutting the Can My sparks aren't nearly as pretty as Hajejans', but I wasn't exactly concentrating on the picture...
	Glue I mixed some JB KWIK (the stuff's amazing) to hold the lens cover to the pringles can and form a tight enough seal to not let any light in.
	Putting it Together The seal it made was just about perfect.
	Putting it on the camera No, I did not do a little victory dance at this point.
	Attaching the lens With the can on the camera, I put the 18-70mm lens in the camera pre-focused at infinity and the aperture stopped down.
	The Full Setup Here's what everything looked like when it was put together. I rested the lens on the table, and had the camera on a tripod so to not stress the can and the glue too much. I used the book and the credit cards to hold the items to be photographed at the correct height. I can't recommend the credit cards enough to raise or lower the item a tiny bit.

Okay, now, the pictures! Note that these are all FULL FRAME, and NOT CROPPED at all! On most of them the color was way off, so I simply desaturated them. Also, I did a quick USM after resizing to keep the detail of the original images. That's it!

Starting with my Pilot v5 rolling ball pen at ~50mm

Pilot v5 rolling ball pen at ~35mm

Standard #2 pencil tip

The ridges on the side of a US quarter

in god we trust

A surface mount PIC Chip on a Basic Stamp 1

If you know electronics, this is a Cadmium Sulfide Cell to measure light.

From a Sierra Nevada tie pin

The tip of a micro phillips head screwdriver

Possibly my favorite... this is salt on a razor blade. I tried for about 10 minutes to stack 3 grains on top of each other using thumbtacks and the razor blade, but I gave up :-/

That's it! I am going to keep trying with this to get the color information correct and get some better quality images, but I am just really excited that everything worked out as well as it did. Of course, I'm supposed to say DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME FOR FEAR OF RUINING YOUR CAMERA.

posted @ 1:07 PM

comments

joeshmoe554 said:

HOLY SHIT!!!! Those are AWESOME!!!, good job on the mod and good luck getting it to work better.

i was yelled at on sat, january 21 @ 2:29 pm

michael said:

wow!

i was yelled at on sat, january 21 @ 5:25 pm

Joe said:

That's neat. How long did it take you?

i was yelled at on sun, january 22 @ 6:02 pm

dave said:

About an hour before I was getting results from the lens, then another hour running around the house looking for small stuff and taking pictures of it.

i was yelled at on sun, january 22 @ 6:39 pm

marilyn sokoloff said:

David I think your idea is really great a chip off the old block...your dad of course. I work with him and he is a great guy...you are lucky!!!!

i was yelled at on mon, january 23 @ 3:12 pm

sheryl said:

i dig the shirt. and the pictures of course.i really like that last one, too!

i was yelled at on mon, january 23 @ 3:23 pm