[HOW TO]Make a Makeshift Macro Lens for your Pocket Camera

If you’re like me and can’t afford to buy a fancy camera for your scorpion pictures here’s an easy way to turn your regular pocket camera into…well a slightly better camera. You probably won’t get the same kind of quality you would get from a $1,000 camera with a real macro lens but it’s definitely an upgrade.
You will need:
1. Camera with extending lens(most cameras have an extending lens, if yours doesn’t….stop being cheap get yourself a $25 camera)
2. Xacto knife
3. Various bottle caps, for my camera I used a pill bottle cap. Depending on the size of you barrel. You will probably need something smaller like a soda bottle cap, or for bigger like a large pill bottle lid.
4. A lense….any type of magnifying lens, could be a magnifying glass or binocular lense, or microscope lense.
Just to let you guys know this is not my invention I got the instruction from this site but I’m regurgitating it here for you guys as well as an example done my friend Logan Pierce (MiPHISTo). ALL PICTURES ARE PROEPERY OF LOGAN PIERCE AND USED WITH HIS PERMISSION. You can check out the how do this here along with pictures. I’ll post the insturction on here too but if you’re a visual learner you should check out this link.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Macro-Atachment-for-pocket-digital-camera/


Procedure:
1.Once you’ve gathered your materials and find a cap that almost fits. A slightly larger cap would work best you can always add some material in between the barrel and the makeshift lens.
2.Using the xacto knife shave out the inside of the bottle cap you’re going to be using so that there is some friction between cap and the camera barrel, just enough for it stick but not tight enough that it’ll disrupt the lense.
3. Once you have the cap fitted for the Camera barrel, you’ll want to cut out a hole for the lense. The quality of the pictures is depended on the quality of the lense. In the examples listed below Logan used the a $10 binoculars he got from a pawn shop.
4. Add the lense to the newly cut hole on the cap, if the hole is to big some hot glue (glue gun) can help you fill in the extra space if there is any.


This is the Miphisto’s Camera + Lens.

Lens on Camera.

Lens on top of camera lens.

Orthochirus spp. Pectines easily able to count them with the new lense


And probably one of the smallest pectines Chaerilus celebensis: (I’m not entire sure how accurate sexing is for this species but its FOUR for female and FIVE for male…amazing they have so few pectines but they are tiny)

If only my parents would approve of this...

ShredderEmp wrote:

If only my parents would approve of this...

lol..


oh great tip.. good thing i have an extra camera for this experimental purpose

you guys realize nothing is done to the actual camera.

The two small things attached to the lens are medicine bottle caps. I pushed out the plastic inserts and they fit perfectly around the camera lens base, not to mention that the binocular lens fit so perfectly into one of the lids that it snaps into the ends of them and stays perfectly snug. The lens I used for the Macro Lens was from a set of Bushnell Binoculars purchased from a local Pawn shop for 10$. Camera is a Canon Powershot A480, used on Super Macro mode at max magnification.

I also meant to add (Double post since no one else has added) that there are plenty of other alternatives. I recently bought a Dino-Lite AM2011 specifically for the purpose of sexing and documenting specific characteristics of each species I own.

Bothriurus keyserlingi:
Male

Female

Pseudouroctonus reddelli:


The Dino-Lite AM2011 is a Microscope in case you haven't figured out from above. With an Articulating Black/White Stand it was 113$, without the stand it is 99$.