Tiny Thing #93: Tiny Tales Book (plus a DIY macro lens)

Tiny Thing #93: Tiny Tales Book

The Tiny Things project has been continuing slowly, yet steadily. This weekend, I shot this tiny joke book, which is about the size of my thumbnail. (Funny that the book is too small to actually contain any Tales. Instead, it contains some very lame kids’ jokes. Apparently, tiny pages don’t have enough room for subtlety or panache.)

The photo above is shot with my Sony A580 through a Minolta 70-210mm macro lens. That’s about as close as I could get to the book without it going completely out of the lens’ range of focus. I thought I’d try to get a close shot, though, through a macro lens I built myself a couple of years ago.

Homemade Macro Lens

Behold my handmade iPhone macro lens, which I made out of two pieces of cardboard, some clear tape, and a lens from the laser assembly of a defunct LaserDisc player. It just so happens that those tiny laser lenses are about the size of the camera opening of an iPhone. All I need to do is line up the opening with the iPhone’s camera, tape it in place, and start shooting photos.

Tiny Thing #93a: Tiny Tales photo taken with DIY macro lens Tiny Thing #93b: Tiny Tales photo taken with DIY macro lens Tiny Thing #93c: Tiny Tales photo taken with DIY macro lens

As you can see, the DIY macro lens isn’t nearly as clear as a commercial lens thanks to its cloudy plastic and peculiar edges, but it certainly works. It has personality, too; I’m rather fond of the warping around the photo edges and the tremendously narrow depth of field. However, it can’t help improve any joke whose punchline is, “The Roller Ghoster.”

If you want to make your own DIY iPhone macro lens, all you need to do is disassemble the laser assembly of any type of optical media player (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, LaserDisc). Inside, you will find two clear plastic lenses; the one with the shallower curves is the one you want to grab. Once you have it, nest it inside a hole in some cardboard, tape it in place, and off you go!

Tiny Thing #46: Extremely Tiny Key

Tiny Thing #46: Extremely Tiny Key, shot with my DIY iPhone macro lens.

One Comment:

  1. The most-minimalist macro lens I’ve seen so far is this:
    http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/macro-lens-band/
    It’s just a lens embedded in a rubber band. Sells for $15 for some reason.

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