Add-on lenses for cell phones are pretty common nowadays, but usually they’re specifically made for certain models and are incompatible with others. The Macro Cell Lens Band is different — it’s a stretchable band with a macro lens baked right in. Simply slip the band onto your phone, place the lens over your phone’s camera, and voila! Instant macro shots. When you’re not using it, you can also wear it around like a gel bracelet. They cost $15 each over at Photojojo.
Photographer Grover Schrayer captured this amazing photograph of a rainbow in candle smoke.
I shot it with my Fuji Finepix S8100fd, with a Raynox M-250 macro lens attached. I shot at 1/1000th or higher, using the camera’s built-in flash. The built -in flash gave me head-on illumination of the smoke, and that head-on lighting allowed me to pick up the refraction through the droplets of wax. Any other angle of illumination would not produce the rainbow effect. The hardest part was getting the camera to focus on just the right part of the smoke. I focused on the wick, or the edge of the flame, had the shutter button half-pressed and ready, and blew out the candle and snapped very quickly. Most of the time the results were less than spectacular, but when the smoke and the timing cooperated, I got shots like this…
Canon’s 50mm f/1.8 Mark II is a terrific lens for its price, but its build quality definitely leaves something to be desired. Do a quick search, and you’ll find legions of broken-hearted Canonites who had their ‘Nifty Fifty’ split into two pieces after accidentally bumping or dropping it. Flickr user tastygiant is one such Canonite, but he subsequently discovered an awesome use for the broken lens:
Being a geek, I figured I could use the broken pieces in the future, so I shelved it and bought a new 50mm 1.8 Canon lens. One day, while taking shots around my apartment, I stumbled across the broken lens again and decided to reverse the “barrel assembly” onto the front of my intact 50mm. Everything was blurry of course, but I noticed if I got very close to an object the detail came into view. After adjusting the aperture to around f5.6, I had a clear image.
It’s important to note that you should switch to Manual focusing and rotate the focusing ring to “infinity”.
You don’t need to shell out money for a nicer camera or a special lens to play around with macro photography. In addition to freelensing and using your lens backward, you can also place an ordinary magnifying glass in front of your lens to enlarge the world. Graphic designer Clif Dickens shot these close-up photos using a magnifying glass and an iPhone 3GS. Read more…
German photographer Heinz Maier only started doing photography last year, but his stunning photographs of water drop splashes are already taking the Internet by storm. By using a macro lens and colored filters, Maier makes tiny splashes of liquid look like intricate glass sculptures. Read more…
After seeing his close-up photographs of human eyes become enormously popular last year, photographer Suren Manvelyan turned to a more difficult subject: animals. He somehow managed to create a series of photographs showing the stunning eyes of animals ranging from crocodiles to horses. Read more…
Photographer Kim Pimmel created this amazing abstract time-lapse using a Nikon D90 and Nikkor 60mm macro lens. What you see is ferrofluid traveling between soap bubbles toward a magnet. No video was used — every frame of the video was shot as a still photo.
When filmmaker Paul Kroeker happened across a dragonfly that lay dying on his deck, he decided to flex his creative muscles, creating this haunting short film with his Canon 7D and Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS macro lens. Perhaps it’ll inspire you to think outside the box when thinking of things to photograph or film.
Nikon has just announced the new AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G lens, which has a FoV equivalent to a 60mm on a full frame body. It boasts a minimum focusing distance of just 6.4 inches, and has a reproduction ratio of 1:1. Read more…
Here’s another quick tutorial by Destin, the guy who helped popularize using chickens as a cheap Steadicam alternative. It was made on an airplane flight when he wanted to shoot some photographs of the ice forming outside his window. If you’re ever in a situation where you want to shoot a macro photo but don’t have a macro lens, try flipping your lens around for a cheap and easy macro photography solution. Read more…
