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Hardware Hacking Technology

Macro Lens from a Pringles Can 241

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the things-that-bear-closer-scrutiny dept.
isharq writes "In a cool little feat of extremely low-tech hardware hacking, Photocritic has created a macro lens out of a Pringles can. According to the article: "with less than £1 worth of equipment, a little bit of sweat and tears, you can build yourself a surprisingly good macro lens". The results are astonishing."
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Macro Lens from a Pringles Can More

Macro Lens from a Pringles Can

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  • The results are astonishing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:52PM (#14239831)
    And the chips aren't half-bad either.

  • Wrong. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrtroy ( 640746 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:53PM (#14239838)
    Don't piss in my ear and tell me its raining!

    Next, you are going to tell me that you can make some sort of 802.11 antenna with a pringles can.

    And whats with this "do it yourself" building projects? My fingers are too greasy and fat to perform such feats.
    • Next, you are going to tell me that you can make some sort of 802.11 antenna with a pringles can.

      Wasn't there a post about that? I seemed to remember it involved canibalizing a tin foil hat as well.

    • My fingers are too greasy and fat to perform such feats.

      Perhaps from eating too many Pringles?

  • Hmmmm ..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:55PM (#14239851) Homepage
    Maybe they should have taken the money they saved on their macro lens and upgraded their server/connection.

    Their server seems to have been reduced to rubble. Anyone got a mirror?

    • Re:Hmmmm ..... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
      Yeah really. It was Slashdotted before there were any posts on the article, I think. Is that a record?

      The Coral Cache seems to be working okay. Some of the photos seem to be missing, though, and the background is a little messed up (although perhaps it's that way on the 'real' site also). Link for the lazy:
      http://www.photocritic.org.nyud.net:8090/2005/macr o-photography-on-a-budget/ [nyud.net]

      Basically what the guy does is take a SLR body cap, cut it up with a dremel and use it as a mounting ring to attach a pringles

      • Re:Hmmmm ..... (Score:2, Informative)

        by M1FCJ ( 586251 )
        These kinds of extension tubes are quite common things, and cheap. I have a number of them for my M42 mount cheap-ass Praktika camera. I think they cost about 2 pounds overall.
        The guy has a D20, if he is rich enough to pay for that camera, he should ne able to afford a proper and good macro lens. Extension tubes are a pain when you are holding the camera and trying to focus but they are cheap alternatives for the real thing. I think the correct terminology is bellows or something like that. I have the stuff

        • Re:Hmmmm ..... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
          Yeah, I almost pointed that out as well, but I figured that some people would say that even $20 or whatever a legitimate bellows or extension tube costs is big bucks to them, and how dare I suggest that it was cheap. :)

          But you're right, the part he's replacing isn't a terribly expensive one. And frankly I don't have a bunch of extra body caps sitting around either. (For some reason I'm always short them, probably because you only get one with each camera body, and they like to grow legs and wander off.)

          Some

      • Re:Hmmmm ..... (Score:4, Funny)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:55PM (#14240363) Homepage
        Yeah really. It was Slashdotted before there were any posts on the article, I think. Is that a record?

        Hardly. Ever since slashdot got subscriptions sites have regularly been down and out before the first comment. Must be one of the only good things about being a subscriber, you could actually RTFA (though it seems optional). Anyway, I love DIY articles where you do a MacGyver with two bits of string and a chewing gum, but this is like.. "Ok, we have $X thousand dollars of SLR equipment, let's try using duct tape!"

        How much would an actual extension ring cost? I did a quick search and I'm looking at prices in the $10-20 dollar range. Wohoo. It's like "How to build your golden Rolls Royce for $5: 1. Buy a can of gold spray 2. Spray it on your Rolls Royce." Let me know when you can make high-percision optics or high-quality CCDs on the cheap, and I'll attach this pringles can to it.

    • Re:Hmmmm ..... (Score:5, Funny)

      by indifferent children ( 842621 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @03:00PM (#14240417)
      Anyone got a mirror?

      No, but you can make a mirror from an old CD.

    • This is my mate's site. The server is actually quite a good dedicated one. I'm not sure which datacentre it's in. It should be running fine now, as we've moved it to boa.

  • Lens, my foot! (Score:4, Informative)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:56PM (#14239866) Homepage Journal
    He built an extension tube from a Pringles can and stuck a Canon lens on the front. This is not "building a lens".

    • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:5, Informative)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:59PM (#14239893) Homepage
      He built an extension tube from a Pringles can and stuck a Canon lens on the front. This is not "building a lens".

      From what I know, that's typically how macro lenses are done.

      My father had all manner of steel-tubes and a billows arrangement for his macro setup. Ultimately, it was his same 50mm objective lens which was on the front of the camera.

      • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:3, Informative)

        by winkydink ( 650484 ) *
        Most major camera lens-makers now offer purpose-built macro lenses. The advantage is you'll get more control over depth of field. Well, that and you can use it as a normal lens.

      • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:5, Informative)

        by scharkalvin ( 72228 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:06PM (#14239944) Homepage
        Actually a true macro lens usually has additional lens elements to correct for various defects resulting from the decreased subject to lens distance. Also they stop down more. While a 'normal' lens can stop down to F16 (sometimes F22), a true macro will go down to F32 or even F45 for greater depth of field.

        • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:2, Informative)

          by fizzup ( 788545 )
          Uh, if you can stop a 50mm lens down to F16, and you put in a 50mm spacer, then the highest stop is now F32. You don't expect the markings on the lens tube to change automatically when you add a Pringles can, do you?
          • Uh, if you can stop a 50mm lens down to F16, and you put in a 50mm spacer, then the highest stop is now F32.
            Wrong. I think you're thinking of a 2x teleconverter (which contains reimaging optics to double the effective focal length of the lens). An extension tube, which contains no optics and is used to shorten the close-focus distance of a lens, does not change the focal ratio.
            • Actually the parent to your post is correct. Adding spacers increase the the f-stop as though the the focal length of the lens increased by the length of the spacer.

              The physical aperture of a 50mm f/16 is 3.125mm. Adding the spacer gives you 100mm which get the f-number of f/32 with 3.125mm aperture.

              This effect of cource also exist with normal focusing (When the whole assembly moves) but is usually too small to bother with. The exception is micro/macro lenses. Many modern micro/macro lenses will actually r
          • Ahhh, but a TRUE macro lens WILL stop down to F32 or even F45 when focused at
            INFINITY!! Add the extension tube to that and what do you get????

            Also an extension tube only increases the ability to focus closer. A lens could be built with a longer spiral cam so it could focus from infinity to zero-(almost nothing). Would it's F-ratio change as it's focused? Does ANY lens F ratio change as it is focused?
            • Ahhh, but a TRUE macro lens WILL stop down to F32 or even F45 when focused at
              INFINITY!! Add the extension tube to that and what do you get????

              A lot of diffraction blur. On modern DSLRs the imager out-resolves lenses at arounf f/16. Of cource if you must increase focal depth go ahead, but you will get to a point where it will be better to reduce magnification and just crop.

        • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:3, Informative)

          by morcheeba ( 260908 ) *
          I know the parent knows this, but for everyone else...

          The reason you'd want greater depth of field with a macro setup is that macro photographs have incredibly short depth of field. With a good set of bellows (mine are probably the length of a pringles can), your depth of field can easily be only 1mm. This makes photographing things that are 2-3mm big a challenge because you have to have the object perpendicular to the lens to be in focus -- that's a pretty boring straight-ahead shot. Extra depth of field l

          • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:5, Funny)

            by plover ( 150551 ) * on Monday December 12, 2005 @04:42PM (#14241251) Homepage Journal
            Reminds me of the comment track from the recent DVD release of the movie Tron. Because the actors were shot in such low light on a black stage, the cameraman had to open his lenses wide to be able to film the scenes. And the wider you open the aperture, the thinner the depth of field. At one point the cameraman told the director "I can't hold focus on the whole actor any more, what do you want me to focus on?" The director responded "his face." The cameraman replied "No, I can't even get the whole face in focus, what part do you want to see?" The director said "his eyes."

            The cameraman then asked "which eye?"

          • I know the parent knows this, but for everyone else...

            "Depth of field," is the distance in front of and behind the subject which appears to be in focus. There is only one distance at which a subject is precisely in focus, and focus falls off gradually on either side of that distance, so there is a region in which the blurring is tolerable. I have no idea what a "set of bellows," is though.
    • And a pox on the editor that approved this trash. Sure, it's neat that you can use a Pringles can as a lens mount. I've used them as coil winding cores, waveguides, insect traps, drums, cookie cutters, and even food storage containers before. Doesn't make it news!

      Of course, if I wrote up the cookie-cutter application as "Pringles can provides limitless food supply", it'd probably make the front page.
    • Yeah, the *nerve* of that guy to try to pass that off as a legitimate project. [SARCASM]

      I had some "friends" who told me that since I did not grow tomatoes from seed I was not a gardener.

      I ate very nice tomatoes that year. Nuts to gardening, I prefer to eat!

    • Re:Lens, my foot! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Don Negro ( 1069 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:36PM (#14240206)
      You're corrent that he didn't build a lens. That misrepresetation is the editor/submitters fault. It's entirely possible neither of them knew any better.

      I want to point out that any vitriol anyone needs to spew about this should be directed to the editor himself, and not confused with comments about this guy's work. He built a cool hack, turning several pieces of cheap equipment into one piece of expensive equipment in the finest tradition of geekiness.

      Just because someone mischaracterised his work doesn't make his work of lesser intrinsic value. It's not what we were told it was when we clicked on the article, but it's pretty cool in and of itself. Let's not let that get lost.

  • Not a lens but (Score:5, Informative)

    by scharkalvin ( 72228 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:57PM (#14239875) Homepage
    What he really built was an extension tube to allow an ordinary
    lens to focus closer.

  • Mirrordot to the rescue (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://mirrordot.org/stories/a6cd3d2482ab26fa99636 acc4d255044/index.html [mirrordot.org]

    Why don't the /. tech monkeys include a Mirrodot/Coral Cache link as part of the story template? It would help defray the /. effect (smoldering servers and whatnot).
    • Perhaps because mirrordot doesnt cache anything until it is posted on slashdot first. You can't link to something that doesnt exist. And if you do, mirrordot might try to cache a link to its own cache, which is a link to its own cache, which is...
    • Why don't the /. tech monkeys include a Mirrodot/Coral Cache link as part of the story template? It would help defray the /. effect (smoldering servers and whatnot).

      Because some people, like me, have to deal with corporate firewall rules that will not allow Coral Cache to work.

  • Macro lens? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @01:59PM (#14239897) Journal
    And what is a "macro lens"? How does it differ from a normal lens?

    • Re:Macro lens? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cosinezero ( 833532 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:04PM (#14239935)
      Most lenses are designed to focus on things in the FAR range - ~10+ feet. Macro lenses can focus on things very close or very small - in the 1' range.

      So if you plan on shooting yet another flower and calling it 'art', you need a macro lens.

      Note that many recent digitals offer moderate macro functions and do not require a macro lens.

      • A foot is way long for midlevel modern digitals (Score:4, Informative)

        by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:57PM (#14240381)
        Macro lenses can focus on things very close or very small - in the 1' range... Note that many recent digitals offer moderate macro functions and do not require a macro lens.

        A foot away is just tremendous distance for a modern mid-priced digital camera. I have a Minolta-Konica Dimage Z5 whose "super macro" mode, while somewhat depth-of-field challenged, can take pictures within a centimeter of the lens. That's on a camera with an image-stabilized 12x optical zoom, too, so it's not like it's the intended strong point of the model. IIRC there's a slightly more recent Canon, also with a longer-than-normal optical zoom, that can take snaps of stuff that's essentially touching the face of the lens.

        That's on your $500-USD tier of cameras. Granted, the DOF is not perfect, and I'm sure it's less than a flat field, but the newest midlevel consumer digicams are lots better than a reflective Pringles can...

    • A Macro lens can also print out your address labels from Wordand format everything as bold italic.

    • Re:Macro lens? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Annoying ( 245064 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:08PM (#14239970)
      A macro lens is capable of taking pictures of things in much more detail than a normal lens. Think of a steel countertop at a moderate distance it would look much like an ordinary camera picture of it would, but if you look a littlem ore carefully even from a few feet away you can usually see scratches in the surface. A macro lens allows you to focus closer than the usual minimum focal distance so you can capture that detail. Normally you'd only be able to get so close and then it'd just get blurry instead of clearer macro lenses are designed to overcome that limitation.

    • Re:Macro lens? (Score:5, Informative)

      by robathome ( 34756 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:33PM (#14240177)

      Focusing distance is not sufficient to qualify a lens as a macro. There are close focusing lenses that are not macro, and there are macro lenses with long focal lengths that don't focus particularly close.

      A true "macro" lens is defined as a lens that allows for at least 1:1 reproduction of the subject image on the recording media. For the sake of simplicity, we'll talk film. If you photograph an object that is 1/2" across, and the resulting recorded image on the film is also 1/2" in size, you're shooting macro. A "macro lens" is one that is capable of rendering at least this 1:1 reproduction.

      Unfortunately, many camera/lens manufacturer have abused the term to mean "focuses at a (slightly) closer distance than a normal lens at an identical focal length, so that when printed to standard 4x6 the image is life-size." This, of course, is regardless of the reproduction ratio of the lens. A rather silly definition, really, since any reasonable frame at any magnification can be cropped and enlarged to "life size" up to a point before quality degrades enough to become unworkable.

      • 1:1 isn't a good cutoff with digicams--The results are what people care about, not some arbitrary value based on sensor size, where the same object at the same final picture size is macro on one camera and not on another. A reasonable claim would be a 35mm equivilant--Any camera that can take a full-frame picture of a 24mm tall object at some minimum resolution should be able to justifiably claim macro regardless of sensor size, otherwise it needs to call it something else. My camera has a "something el
    • Unless it's a Nikon, then it's a Micro.

  • The server... (Score:4, Funny)

    by zenneth ( 767572 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:01PM (#14239912)
    ...was probably constructed of a Pringles can, too.

  • Make sure you paint the outside of the can... (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:03PM (#14239925)
    ...or you will end up looking like that biggest nerd on the planet.

    It is also great for viewing microscopic flakes of potato chip residue. Paper towel rolls, in all their inadequacy, are known to be suffering from lenses envy.
  • Occasionally there's some miswordings in article titles or you have to RTFA to really understand what the brief summary was trying to convey.

    But this is the first /. I've read that is totally, wrong. Sure you can make a cool macro lens out of a Pringles can for less than $1 but you forgot the important part you need a lens slash full normal 35mm camera already to pull this off.

    Totally misleading summary. Mod me down if you want, I'm not trying to flame but seriously this is just hitting a low for /.

    • Honestly, I'd have thought that most people who would be interested in a DIY macro setup would understand that it's not going to be an article about home lens fabrication, and that using a macro lens requires a camera.

    • Re:The first time I ever felt deceived by /. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:47PM (#14240304) Homepage
      But this is the first /. I've read that is totally, wrong. Sure you can make a cool macro lens out of a Pringles can for less than $1 but you forgot the important part you need a lens slash full normal 35mm camera already to pull this off.

      Yeah. Just like when someone points out that you can build an antenna for wireless networking with a Pringles can, it's all a big scam because you already needed to have a working computer and a wireless infrastructure, how lame. What a rip-off, you can't build the whole network with just the pringles can?

      We should all feel greatly deceived when there are any pre-requisites for a DIY project. I'm still waiting to get instructions on making a supercomputer completely out of a pumpkin, but no luck so far.

      • Yeah. Just like when someone points out that you can build an antenna for wireless networking with a Pringles can, it's all a big scam because you already needed to have a working computer and a wireless infrastructure

        False. When they say "build a Pringles can network antenna", they are literally building an antenna. This guy isn't building a macro lens, he's building an extension ring to adapt a regular existing lens for macro focusing.

    • About the hard drive cooler that would only cost 10 cents. Unlinked cause I don't have a photographic memory regarding HTML formatting.

      http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/ 23/1338212&tid=222&tid=198&tid=137 [slashdot.org]

  • Astonishingly.. lame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:11PM (#14239993)
    So all you need is:

    • A camera.
      • A SLR.
      • That you don't mind getting wrecked.
      • Due to getting Pringle-bits in the mechanical bits.
      • Or due to getting Pringle-salt in the mechanical bits.
      • With a removable lens.
      • But not a lens scheme that telemeters f-stop or focus or depth-of-field indicators or flash timer.
      • And not an old Retina-Reflex with the shutter built into the lens.
    • And you can stand putting duct-tape on a piece of precision equipment.
    • And you don't already have a lens with the twist-to-macro feature.
    • And you don't mind wrecking the lens when it falls off the end of the tube.
    • And you don't mind the idiocy of using a tube with reflective insides when optimally it should be just the opposite.

    Otherwise, it's a swell idea.

    • Re:Astonishingly.. lame (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Oh yeah, but check this out, if you take a pringles tube and hold it up to one eye and then put your hand up right next to it it totally looks like you are looking through a hole in your hand... it's wicked awesome
    • I imagine that a professional, or semiprofessional photographer is quite capable of having numerous unused cameras around, the same way that it's not hard to imagine that a guitar geek has numerous guitars and could part with one for a project, or a slashdotter has a spare machine to try out a new operating system.
      • Yeah, but a professional/semi-professional would just buy a REAL extention tube (if not a full out macro lens). Extention tubes are cheap. I think they start at $30-40. I bought a set of 3 different sizes for $80. And these are quality engineered parts with full support for aperture and auto-focus control.
  • Does it work with any Pringles taste? Build a color filter lens for exceptional sunsets with the paprika flavour.
    • Does it work with any Pringles taste? Build a color filter lens for exceptional sunsets with the paprika flavour.

      Waitaminute ... Pringles comes in paprika flavour? Why wasn't I notified?!?!

      Is this a regional delicacy, or do all places selling Pringles have a paprika flavour?

      That sounds like such a yummy flavour, there's no way it's available to me.

  • Not 1£ lens (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elgatozorbas ( 783538 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:20PM (#14240055)
    This is a nice contraption, kudos to the guy.

    However it is a bit frustrating to see all these post lately 'build $$$ device at peanut cost' which then usually involve having all kinds of stuff in advance, e.g. "cannibalising a few of the lens- and body covers that most of us have laying around."

  • Tune in next week... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gigabit Switchman ( 16654 ) <drew.vanzandtNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:23PM (#14240083) Homepage
    ...when I show you how to construct:
          - A working fusion reactor
          - A 3" mortar
          - A simple teleportation device
    AND
          - A cat ... from a Pringles can.

  • Whatever next? (Score:3, Funny)

    by seniorcoder ( 586717 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:25PM (#14240100)
    Next, someone's gonna discover that these cans make convenient containers for chips.
    • Only if all your chips happen to be of identical size and shape.
    • Next, someone's gonna discover that these cans make convenient containers for chips.

      But only for the chips that are identically molded and collected by machines, stacked neatly together in a precise, potato-lattice
      (u = x^2 - y^2) fashion ready for rapid consumption by hungry animals.
  • The primary difficulty in macro photography is getting enough depth-of-field (DOF), which is totally dependent on the film area size. Although this is a gross simplification, in general, the smaller the film area the more DOF you get. This is where tiny digital sensors shine. If you are serious about Macro, forget about 35mm or larger film formats. And I might even forget about full-frame dSLRs too and instead choose the APS-sized sensor.

    And this is coming from someone who shoots 4x5 large-format for mo
    • Merely picking a smaller sensor will not help you all that much with DOF for macro photography--it's still too small. And tilt movements also don't help that much.

      The way you get large DOF with digital is by combining several different shots with different focus.
      • Google "circle of confusion" to learn about how film area size affects depth-of-field. Stitching is only effective for some subjects. It won't work for anything that moves or for light that might change.

        • Google "circle of confusion" to learn about how film area size affects depth-of-field.

          Yes, you should. The formula is H=L*L/A/C. At first glance, that looks like H goes like the square of the focal length L. For film, C was fixed (smaller negatives just contained less detail), but an 8 Mpixel APS sensor requires a proportionally smaller circle of confusion than an 8 Mpixel full frame sensor, so your DOF gains are only linear at constant aperture if you want to record the same detail. But the aperture i

  • Extension ring, not a macro lens (Score:5, Informative)

    by BobaFett ( 93158 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:38PM (#14240221) Homepage
    What this guy built is an extension ring, not a macro lens. He used an existing lens, he chose non-macro lens, a macro lens would provide more precise focusing and flat focal plane but otherwise would work the same.

    What he built is called extension ring, it fits between the camera and the lens and allows extremely close focusing of any lens. Extension rings go for $20-$40, sometimes you can find them used for less, or you can by a set of 3 for around $100. Factory-made rings usually preserve automatic functions of the lens, at least aperture control, sometimes even autofocus. They are usually much shorter than the pringles can, anywhere from 9mm to 45mm (and you can stack them).

    So this little contraption does save you some bucks, just not as much as you might have hoped if you read the title and priced a macro lens.
    • To be pedantic, he did not change the focusing distance, he moved the lens closer to the object. Focusing distance is properly measured from the sensor to the object, not from the front of the lens.

      It strikes me that a pringles can must be maybe the worst imaginable thing to make a extention tube out of its insides beeing reflective...

      A bellows isn't that expensive, I got a used nikon bellows for about $200 and with that I also get tilt&shift functionality, adjustable extention, focusing rail and a prop
    • I was thinking the same thing. He saved about $100 for extension tubes, for a $1200 camera. He also lost all automatic function, lost a bit of control (the normal 2 pack of extension tubes allows you 3 lengths depending how you stack). Ok fine, this is just a hobby, he can do what he wants...

      He also gets poorer optics by the fact that there is no way he can align the egdes to the tolerances of a real lens, even one as cheap as the 50mm mkII. I'd bet this would void all types of warranties. He looks lik

  • Even easier (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pqdave ( 470411 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:39PM (#14240224)
    I use velcro to temporarily attach a $1.99 jeweler's loupe to the front of my point and shoot digicamera. Cost is similar to a box of Pringles, image quality is fine for web pics. By buying the $3.99 set of 5 loupes, I get a variety of magnification levels, down to a 2mm object taking up the full frame.
    • The best thing about your approach is that it works with P&S cameras, which probably far more Slashdotters own.

      I recall seeing in someone's blog that they were using a (relatively) cheap Radio Shack triple-lens pocket magnifier to allow macro photography with his cameraphone.

      Also, I've seen at least one HOWTO (in a dead-tree format book) for adding an attachment mounting tube to digital cameras that don't normally allow for mounting of attachments/filters. (such as polarizers, macro adapters that are b
  • could Pringles Cans be the new Nanotubes?

  • Another cheap way to do macro photography (Score:3, Informative)

    by Metrathon ( 311607 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:45PM (#14240283)
    A very nice way to do macro photography is to place that 50 mm (or similar) lens reversed in front of your lens. You can buy a reversing ring for the purpose. It is easy to do if you only have threads for the reversing ring on your camera (many point and shoot digital don't). Just zoom in (to minimize vignetting) and stop down the lens you are mounting the (wide open) normal lens on.
  • If you are serious about doing macro photography but don't have to budget to buy a macro lens for your SLR, best would be to use a lesn reversing ring to put the lens backwards on the camera. That way you can use your regular lens as a very good macro lens. Focusable, zoomable, what ever... won't even cost you much more then a box of pringles and no risk of geasing up your SLR.
  • He used a pringles can as an extension tube. I did the same with a cardboard tube back in the 70's, I was 13 at the time. Not rocket science. Official: ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING can make it to slashdot.

  • Summary of article. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deacon ( 40533 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @04:47PM (#14241297) Journal
    1: Take a cardboard tube that contains greasy, salt-laden + crumbs material.

    2: Using a dremel tool grind out the sheet steel bottom. Leave metal swarf and dust inside tube.

    3: Glom this mess onto your camera and lens.

    4: Wonder why your camera develops problems later.

    Seriously, read the article. The complete carelessness is horrible. This article is like a sick joke on people who don't know or think about the implications of getting salt and metal dust into their camera.

  • This was on Boing Boing [boingboing.net] a solid 4 days ago.

    Incidentally, that site is strongly recommended for ./ readers who want slightly less nerd in their news.

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