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Another badass homemade lens! This one was made from a magnifying glass by Flickr member [j°Sh]. As you can see in this photo made with it, it’s got enough chromatic aberration and focal falloff to make things endlessly interesting.

Here’s the lens itself:

You can see more photos made with it here in his Flickr photostream.

Flickr member Mr. Mikey Mike has made some gorgeous photos with a lens made from a loupe!

Here’s the lens itself:

You can see more photos made with this lens in his homemade lens photo set on Flickr.

Bosse Blomqvist pulled the lens off a Lex35 and put it on a 4×5 camera with a medium format 9×12cm back. Above is the somewhat surprising result: the coverage is far bigger than I’d have expected!

Bosse writes:

Had to check out how the magnificient Lex 35 would behave as a large format camera, or at least how the lens would perform when mounted on a view cam and using it to shoot a 9×12cm negative…

Continue reading in his Flickr photostream.

The Lex35/Vivitar T100 is a crappy, hackable, cheap, plastic camera. Above is Eben Ostby’s result from flipping and spacing the lens. He writes:

I don’t have pictures to show what I did, but if you look at my photostream, you’ll see a few "addled" photos that were done with a Lex 35 with a flipped lens. Here’s what I did:

Took apart the Lex35 [Eben’s instructions, with photos, are here].

Took the lens "board" off by removing its two screws. On the back of the lensboard, there’s a plastic ring that holds the lens in place, and which can be popped off by prying it gently with a screwdriver or such.

The lens comes out and can be reversed and placed in the front part of the lens-holder - in the stepped rings that are visible from the front. I used a thick washer to hold it in place, but you can improvise something else… tinfoil, glue, putty… I dunno. With the lens pushed as far back as I could get it to go, it the camera "focuses" (if that’s really the word) from about 2 feet to 30 feet. Sort of.

I also tried flipping the lens around but putting it back in the back part of the lensboard. If you do this, you’ll need to shim the lensboard away from the body of the camera, and use longer screws (such as the ones that hold the body of the camera together). And the focus is worse.

I’ve gotta say, I’m thrilled at having a screwed up Lex35 like this. It just made my week.

You can pick up a Vivitar 100 (same as the Lex35 except it has a tripod mount) for US $1.95 from American Science & Surplus.

Related: Lex 35/Vivitar T100 bulb shutter/multiple exposure mod how-to here on Photon Detector

Trask Bedortha has been playing with flipping and mixing lens elements to get distortion-free wider-angle coverage. Check out the examples and descriptions in this thread in the Through the Viewfinder group (where you shoot the ground glass of another camera) on Flickr.

MAKE Blog says:

The latest Citizen Scientist has a short how-to on making a telephoto lens from a spotting scope - "You can make a telephone lens for your camera with a spotting scope and a center-slotted aluminum bracket… The camera is attached to the bracket with a bolt that fits the camera’s tripod mount. The spotting scope is attached using appropriate hardware."

Read more at the Citizen Scientist.

Matthew Wheeler took his first picture through an ice lens in response to a challenge by Scientific American and CBC calling on listeners to light a fire with a lens made entirely of ice. Too easy by far - Matthew took it one step farther and started photographing the natural beauty of his surroundings through the ice lenses he made.

Check out the photos (mirror site) or a video on DiscoveryChannel.ca.

Via Digg

Randy from Holgamods continues to kick ass: he’s now selling a Holga lens mounted on a body cap for use on Canon EOS cameras (Rebel XT, 20D, 30D, etc.). US $34.95, order here.

I’ve ordered cameras from Holgamods before and recommend him strongly. If you want a Holga and don’t want to modify it yourself, this is the place to go. (I have no relationship with Randy other than being a satisfied customer.)

I have to admit, I am tired of using Photoshop to create a pseudo Holga shot using javascripts found in flickr.com so I decided to just go ahead and hack my Holga CFN and give it a second life since all it has been doing is gathering dust. My plan—to hack the hell out of my holga and turn it into an EOS lens for my Canon 20D.

Read instructions at Litratista

Via MAKE Blog

The people at Sushicam have successfully grafted the Minitar lens from a Lomo LC-A onto an Epson RD-1 digital rangefinder. Check out the step-by-step of building the lens mount as well as sample images here at Sushicam.

See previous post on part 1.

Also don’t miss Ta King, who has several galleries of photos taken with Lomo Minitar and Holga lenses hacked onto his Canon Digital Rebel DSLR.