Maximizing your digital dollar.

[Anonymous]

It can be very frustrating to try and make a lower
end digital camera take macro photos.
Here is a cheap and easily implemented idea that
will help your digital camera take better macro
shots.
I have used a cheap Casio QV-10a for several years
and with the right techniques it can be made to
take a prettey decent photo, unfortunately it is
not much on close up pics... <IMG SRC="/forums/images/frown.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">
So I decided to do something about it.
I went to the local goodwill/thrift/junk store
and looked around.
I noticed that there were alot of sets of disk
camera lenses at these stores and that the bracket
looked like it would be easily adaptable for the
front of the QV-10.
I took the disk camera lens and removed it from
the bracket, tossing it into the trash where it
belonged..
Then I took an older and broken camera, removed
the front element and the compound lens from underneath.
(any old rangefinder like a Minolta Hi-matic, or
Petri 7s will contain the right lens)
This compound lens is a powerfully magnifying,
color corrected lens of very high quality.
After I carefully made sure that the bracket
would fit the digital camera without causing any
damage I carefully attached the compound lens to
the bracket (using Epoxy resin) and let it dry
over night.
Viola !! A removeable macro lens, costing only a
few dollars, that greatly improves the ability of
a $150.00 digital camera to take close up photos.
You can experiment with a cheap digital without
any tremendous fear of destroying it and the
results can be quite satisfying as illustrated
below..
As with all things in life, your mileage may vary <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">

 

[Anonymous]

Ross,
Neat story although I don't know what a disk camera is and what it would be doing in a Goodwill Store. The lens you show looks to be off a 35mm slr camera...
Thanks for the time you took to put that together.
Good shooting... Guvner..

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry bout that, I gotta stop doing stuff at 2:00am.. <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">
Something I should have added is that this will
NOT work with Autofocus cameras and will only
work with a fixed focus camera like the QV-10a.
Disk cameras were those little flat cameras that
used disk film, many brands such as Kodak, Ansco,
Minolta.. The telephoto/close-up lens sets for
them are very common (a couple bucks usually
at junk stores).
The bracket could be made from just about any type
of easily bent metal so that it fits over the
existing lens of the digital camera.
The compound lens element for the Macro lens was
removed from a Petri 7s rangefinder camera
produced in the sixties, another junk store find.
Any broken camera that has a fairly large glass
front element will have a compound lens element
underneath.
Another source of these lenses are broken autofocus
35mm cameras, the common plastic variety from any
of the major manufacturers will have a good
quality compound lens that can be used to enhance
the macro abilities of a cheaper digital fixed
focus camera.
In the picture below you can see an original
1.4X Disk camera telephoto accessory lens (which
also happens to work on the QV-10a) next to the
modified macro lens.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for taking the time to put something like that together to share with us!
I've had a Casio QV-11 camera for about 3 or 4 years now. Haven't moved up to a megapixel camera yet, but would love to. Just hoping prices get down a bit first. I gotta keep my eyes open for some yard sale goodies now. Thanks again!
Keep clicking - John Y in PA