My (sort of) Homemade Lens

This project was my second attempt at fitting a lens from something else to my Canon Rebel XT. The results I have gotten have me very pleased and surprised, but more on that in a moment.


My first attempt involved a magnifying glass and a viewfinder from an old kodak brownie. I almost hosed my camera. I used superglue to attach plastic plumbing pipe together. While testing it, I noticed I could smell glue. Seemed a bit odd, so luckily I removed it from my camera. The glue fumes I realized the next day were actually leaving deposits of superglue film on the inside of the lens and presumably would have done that to the inside of my camera had I left it attached. Moral of the story, do not mix superglue and cameras.

"The Airequipt telescoping focus giftwrap tube & papertowel tube electrical tape wrapped awesome lens"

<--------- Maybe someone can help me get a better name for this beast?


Ingredients: One gift wrap cardboard tube (with a slightly larger diameter than the paer towel tube), One paper towel cardboard tube, one roll of electrical tape, one canon Rebel XT body cap, one PVC pipe fitting, and the special ingredient - a lens from an old Airequipt slide projector.
Obviously the ingredients can vary, but the concept should work for most similar combinations.

Construction was fairly simple. I dremeled out the center of a body cap so that I would have something that attaches to the camera seamlessly and easily.

Then I used the electrical tape to attach the lens to the paper towel tube. The front of the lens pointing in to the tube (see next photo). I wrapped the entire exterior of the tube with electrical tape.



<--- here the lens is shown attached to the paer towel tube. The lens faces in to the tube. in this picture, you are looking at the back of the lens which will face the camera.




Next, I attached the gift wrap tube to the body cap using the elecrical tape. Again, I covered the exterior with electrical tape (just for looks here).
Now come some trial and error. You have to determine your focus range and cut your tubes to length accordingly. You may want to determine this before you even begin assembly, but I never do things the smart way ;)

Once you have both tubes cut to length, you simply slide the paer towel tube into the gift wrap tube, attach to your camera and start shooting. To adjust your focus, you simply slide the inner tube in and out based on distance.

Here are some samples from my first week with my new lens. By the way, I figure this to be approximately a 100mm lens with a focal range from 1.25 ft to infinity. It is wide open and in direct sunlight I have to shoot at 1/3200 or 1/4000 often still needing some post work to compensate for overexposure.