A lot of you have been sending me emails asking what is is going on with this project. It’s been over a month since I’ve last posted on this blog. But there is a perfectly good explanation for my lack of activity here…
I’m getting married! Yep. I found the one and we’re getting hitched on Oct 1, 2010. Just a few weeks from now. So I hope you’ll understand why the research has come to sort of a stand still. But I’ve got a few interesting things I’ve found that I’ll be sharing shortly.
Last night my fiancé and I were doing some star gazing and I decided to take some shots of the moon with my iPhone DSLR mount. After a few easy DIY tweaks and some elementary ingenuity, I started digiscoping through the telescope we were using. Here are the results:
This first shot had mediocre results because of the high contrast in the brightness of the moon vs the darkness of the sky
In this photo I used a higher magnificiation intermediary optic on the eyepiece to get a larger image, and I’m using a filter to decrease the contrast. You can even see some of the craters in the moon!
There is quite a bit of motion blur. This is due to the difficulty I found in keeping my set up setup completely still and the slight movement of the moon as I attempted to take the pictures (who knew the moon moved so much!). There is some chromatic aberration as well due, most likely, to the intermediary lens set up I’m experiementing with.
Overall, I think the results are interesting. Let me know what you think!
I am completely infatuated with the possibility of being able to take high quality DSLR-like images, edit them, and upload them all in one device. So I decided to do some experimentation with mobile photo editting. Here are the results:
I first started with an image I took with my iPhone. Nothing fancy. Just a shot of my Rubik’s cube I took sitting at my desk at work. I used a blank white sheet of letter sized paper as the back drop, and my desk lamp for lighting.
Next, I used the Photoshop Express app (free on the app store!) to increase the exposure, change the contrast, and used the vibrant effect.
After looking at the the photo, I realized that I really liked the way it looked upside down, so I used Photoshop Express to rotate the image 180 degress.
Finally, I found an app called Montager (free version brands your photos on the bottom right) that allows you to make a nifty looking montage. I combined the above photo with a couple of other shots of I took of the Rubiks cube and Voila!
Overall the options for editting were limited but it just shows what’s possible! I’m sure someone with more skill than I have can put together some amazing stuff.
Here’s a condensed version of the sequence:
Oh by the way! I’m writing this post on my iPhone and uploading the images straight through the WordPress app.
Tell me what you think. What other interesting things can I do with iPhone apps and mobile editing?
Below are a batch of sample shots my brother Terry and I took with my iPhone DSLR lens mount Prototype 1.1
I recently finished building a model of Frank Llyod Wright’s Falling Water out of Legos, and we thought it would be an adequate subject to shoot. Without having any studio lights we illuminated the subject using a desk lamp. As a comparison, we took some shots with the iPhone only to compare them with shots taken with Prototype 1.1
These were taken in the evening after I got off work, the only time I have to sit and tinker with my little projects =)
 Lego House 1 taken with iPhone only |
 Lego House 1 taken with iPhone, DOF Adapter, and DSLR Lens |
 Lego House 2 taken with iPhone only |
 Lego House 2 taken with iPhone, DOF Adapter, and DSLR Lens |
 Lego House 3 taken with iPhone only |
 Lego House 3 taken with iPhone, DOF adapter, and DSL lens |
Lego House 3 Optical Zoom
Now before you go and criticize the quality or composition of the pictures, remember that I’m not a professional photographer. Heck I’m not even an enthusiast. I just like to tinker. So I’m sure that someone with some real photography talent could come up with some much better photographs.
Having said that, some of the biggest problems I found is that the iPhone automatically sets exposure levels and white balance to what it thinks is the best. That is why pictures come out looking white washed or too dark. There is an app called “almostDSL” that allows you to reset the levels by tapping on the screen but it does not allow you to set it to specific levels.
We also wanted to try some macro shots. Below are a few of the shots we took with a 10x macro filter on my Canon 35mm-80mm lens mounted on my iPhone.
Lego House 4 Macro photo from iPhone DSLR Lens Mount 1.1
Lego House 5 Macro photo from iPhone DSLR Lens Mount 1.1
Lego House 6 Macro photo from iPhone DSLR Lens Mount 1.1
Lego House 7 Macro photo from iPhone DSLR Lens Mount 1.1
Stamp Macro photo from iPhone DSLR Lens Mount 1.1
Hopefully, I’ll get more time to test the output in some better lighting conditions and I’ll post what I find. Check back soon!
After running into several problems with my iPhone DSLR Lens Mount Prototype 1.0 I decided to find some solutions.
One major problem was that the back of the DSLR lens had such a small image that it was impossible to get a useful image cast unto the iPhone camera. So what was the solution? A Depth of Field (DOF) Adapter.
DOF adapters are used on video cameras that have lenses that can’t produce the depth of field effect. The term 35mm adapter comes from the fact that most common designs use a focusing screen the size of a 35mm film frame (24×36 mm) and interface with lenses designed for 35mm cameras.
Focusing Screen
The major component of a DOF adapter is the focusing screen. Generally the screen is made of ground glass. The screen is where the DSLR/photographic lens image is projected. Using the adapter creates a much more reasonably sized image for the iPhone or video camera to focus on. As you can see here:
Macro Lens
A macro lens is needed when the device does not have adequate macro capability. As a stand alone camera, I’ve found that the minimum focal distance on the iPhone is somwhere between 50-60mm. But by using intermediary optics to increase magnification, minimum focal distance can be significantly reduced.
Achromatic Lens
As light passes through lenses color is refracted at different wavelengths, a lens can fail in focusing all the colors into one convergence point and the resulting image can be distored. This is called chromatic abberations.
An achromatic lens is can can optionally be used with a DOF adapter to reduce chromatic and spherical abberations. In other words, it makes images look less like they came out of a fish eye lens and puts the colors back together.
Limitations
DOF Adapters do not come without their limitations. One inherent limitation is the loss of light. I’ve found that when using the depth of field adpater I loose about 1-2 F-stops of light. So shooting with it requires that the subject is adequately lit.
Another limitation I found was that it is very difficult to keep all the optics in the DOF adapter free of dust. If there is any dust on the ground glass, on the macro lenses, or on the achromatic lens it will show up on the image.
Image orientation is also a limitation. when shooting with a DOF adapter, the image will be flipped upside down. When shooting with an iPhone, this problem can be addressed by using an app called ”almostDSLR”
Cost is another limitation. Getting a professional quality DOF adapter can cost you anywhere between a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars. You could make your own… Which is a difficult undertaking (trust me). Or you could do what I did and buy one online. I got the EnCinema 35mm DOF Adapter from Vid-atlantic for great price.
With the DOF adapter and intermediary optics, I’m naming this model “Prototype 1.1″. I’ll post some the photos I took with it shortly.
[UPDATE 8/16/2010]
You can find photos I took with “Prototype 1.1″ here: Sample Shots from iPhone DSLR Lens Mount Prototype 1.1
After images of my “iPhone DSLR Protype 1.0″ got reposted to Engadget, Slashdot, Gizmodo, and about 50,000 other sites, it got a whole lot of attention – 3M hits of attention – some from critics and some from fans of my idea.
So I decided to lay low for a little bit before posting on this blog again, hoping that the critics would find something else to nit-pik about.
I’ve done a lot of research and experimentation with diopters, lenses, and dof adapters that I’m really excited about. I’ll be sharing my findings soon and show you step by step how to make your own iPhone DSLR lens mount. Stay tuned!
Comment Spam
My goodness… I had no idea that this little blog would get so much comment spam! I’ve been looking through all the comments that this blog as received recently, and I would say that a good 90% of all the comments that get submitted to this site is obvious comment spam. Here are some reasons why you should stop spamming my comments section
1) It Won’t Get Approved – Now I don’t mind if you make a genuine comment about a post and attach a link to your website, but If you’re blatantly spamming my comments section I’m just not going to approve it.
2) It’s a Waste of Time -I actually read through the comments that are submitted and I approve only the comments that I feel are generated by a real person, and are relevant to the post. If your comment doesn’t meet that criteria, it won’t ever see the light of day. Which means that posting it is a waste of your time and reading it is a waste of mine.
3) It Won’t Help in SEO – All of my external links in the comments section are automatically external nofollow links. I’m no SEO guru or anything, but I’m pretty sure this means that if you’re trying to squeeze some link juice out of the page, it’s not going to be effective.
Well, Sorry for being so sour, but that’s my rant for the day.