27.11.08 by Jeff

$20 Homemade Fisheye Lens

Why pay $300 for a fisheye when you can go to Home Depot and build one for $20? My friend Ryan and I bought a peephole and a couple pieces of pvc, stuck them together with a hot glue gun, and it was done. Literally 20 minutes. I felt like Steven Seagal when he made that silencer with a 2L pop bottle in Under Siege.

Take a peek at the fishy footage and some more photos below!

I am pretty proud of the fact that the lens actually looks kinda cool.

If you make one, a few layers of tape inside will help make the lens fit snug and still be detachable.













Comments
  • http://animalyouth.com Andy

    This looks pretty sweet, but the video is set to private. A how to would be pretty awesome…

  • http://www.jeffhamada.com/ jeffhamada

    sorry about that andy, i accidently clicked it to private. should be fine now. yea i would do a how to but its really just a matter of trial and error finding the right pieces of PVC at home depot that fit the peep hole.

    we took the peephole out of the packaging and spent some time looking through the bins to find one that fit the really well.

    we also shaved a tiny bit off of the piping with a swiss army knife to give it a perfect fit.

  • http://rynonymous.blogspot.com rye

    hahaha thank you for editing out my failures as a skateboarder.

  • http://www.mstrpln.com stefan mstrpln

    You need to follow it up with a “skate handle” to get that GL1 steez on.

    http://www.instructables.com/id/Skaters-Camera-Handel/

  • http://lovecrusader.com milah.b

    YO, THIS IS TIGHT.
    I WONDER IF IT WOULD WORK FOR A NIKON SLR…

    HOW DO YOU SUGGEST DOING IT?

  • http://www.jeffhamada.com/ jeffhamada

    i would not recommend this for an SLR because with the video camera you are adding the fisheye in front of the lens already in place you are not replacing the lens. if that makes sense. with an slr that would mean you would have the lens on and then you’d have this other fish eye sitting on top and it just wouldn’t work – this will work great on a little point and shoot camera though.

    sorry i accidentally deleted a comment above this one when i tried to reply – the question was regarding the focus. you just put your camera on manual focus – dont use auto focus or it might focus on the second lens and throw the rest of the picture out of focus.

  • Maciel V

    Do you think it could work on a Canon Powershot Pro1?

  • Jeremy

    I like this, I’ll have to try it out. I’ve been looking for a good fisheye setup for the back of my board, wanted to try out that perspective. Did you get the snowboarding footage yet? How did that work out?