Most of the popular digital and DSLR cameras are perfectly equipped for macro photos. Taking a great photo by zooming to the scene no farther than 20-30 centimeters is a little effort and requires only clicking the shutter button and leaving all the technicalities to the camera's automated software. Even the cheap lenses can do that without a problem. A while ago I collected some of those photos and wrote a little about macro photography and how to record all the close objects not very distant from our nose.
But can we do closer than that? Can we take a photo of an object like the top of a pencil as close as a couple of millimeters away from the lens, for example, like the one in this photo:
Well, not with a consumer camera, not without specialized optics. However, "augmenting" our smartphones to do the magic is just a little effort. And yes, I took the above photo with only my smartphone, an additional plastic lens I taped to its camera, and... lots of patience.
To be completely honest, taking a photo of an insect, small in size, like a hair louse that is erratically running and jumping in your small zooming window, is not little effort per se, but it can make your day and everything else is just a piece of cake. All you have to do is strip one of those laser pointers and rip out its lens. Perhaps the better results you can get are with a laser pointer equipped with a lens made with greater optical quality, but for starters, anyone can do it. So, like in the left image, or if you click on the bottom reference link, when you take out the lens, all you have to do is tape it to your camera lens on the back of your smartphone, and the rest is your imagination. If you follow the image story, the goal can be even bigger—the end result can be one of those microscopes you can find in toy stores with quality lenses, capable of taking a photo or even a video clip of a microworld with up to the cellular level. Complete instructions on building such a device you can find within the Turn Your Smartphone Into a Digital Microscope! YouTube page.
Of course, taking microphotos means you have to get close to the scene, and your smartphone will block most of the useful light, so you have to think like an ordinary microscope. You bring the light with you and position it just below or next to the "set". I recommend one of those LED flashlights that are very small in size that allows you to carry them along with your phone. I used one of those book reader LED lights with a flexible handle with just one LED source on the top. That way you can fit both in your hand—the light and the phone. The other hand will be responsible just for zooming and the button. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is how it looks in action.
I didn't play too much time with this, but I am sure the following summer will bring lots of more microphotos when all of that microbiological life emerges, but it is amazing what exactly you can stumble upon in your front yard or balcony in just a couple of hours. In the image below to the right, when I pointed the lens toward the rose's stem, I thought I would get only some sort of reddish plant spores, but instead my memory card was filled with tiny and not too adorable rose lice. In other words, if you make this, prepare to be surprised at what exactly you might find in there.
Therefore, I advise practicing first with non-live objects in your own household, like in the above example of pencil tops, and believe me, exercising is what you really need to do, simply because zooming out of focus is just one tiny move of your finger or even a significant breath or hesitation. Anyway, I will be adding more images to this gallery in the future, and besides the embedded images in this post, there are more in the web gallery.
In today's update, the story goes further into the microworld, and this time with a cheap 'consumer' digital microscope. I bought one for Viktor's 11th birthday earlier this year, and during this entire spring we played with it a lot. In quality and zooming, it was more or less in the realm of the DIY smart microscope I made and described in the post. However, it brought to the scene its own powerful LED lights, and with its pencil-like shape, it was more controllable and applicable. The downside was that it was far beyond smartphone camera quality, and the number of pixels was not too high to capture quality videos, but still, its educational value was out of the question.
This new addition to the post imagery was actually a video from Viktor's YouTube channel, zViktor22, where he tested the microscope with various plants, food, money, fabrics, insects, and more from our country village, household, his 5th grade herbarium, and our front yard. I also included our old smart microscope photos and the caterpillar video from the initial post to complete the story about what it's possible to do with little effort and cheap technology.
Original post: May 2014, Update: June 2018.
Smart Microscope:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TNng7utQTw1zb3GK8
But can we do closer than that? Can we take a photo of an object like the top of a pencil as close as a couple of millimeters away from the lens, for example, like the one in this photo:
Dot-sized larvae of cricket or grasshopper invading our balcony flowerpot
Well, not with a consumer camera, not without specialized optics. However, "augmenting" our smartphones to do the magic is just a little effort. And yes, I took the above photo with only my smartphone, an additional plastic lens I taped to its camera, and... lots of patience.
To be completely honest, taking a photo of an insect, small in size, like a hair louse that is erratically running and jumping in your small zooming window, is not little effort per se, but it can make your day and everything else is just a piece of cake. All you have to do is strip one of those laser pointers and rip out its lens. Perhaps the better results you can get are with a laser pointer equipped with a lens made with greater optical quality, but for starters, anyone can do it. So, like in the left image, or if you click on the bottom reference link, when you take out the lens, all you have to do is tape it to your camera lens on the back of your smartphone, and the rest is your imagination. If you follow the image story, the goal can be even bigger—the end result can be one of those microscopes you can find in toy stores with quality lenses, capable of taking a photo or even a video clip of a microworld with up to the cellular level. Complete instructions on building such a device you can find within the Turn Your Smartphone Into a Digital Microscope! YouTube page.
 |
 |
Of course, taking microphotos means you have to get close to the scene, and your smartphone will block most of the useful light, so you have to think like an ordinary microscope. You bring the light with you and position it just below or next to the "set". I recommend one of those LED flashlights that are very small in size that allows you to carry them along with your phone. I used one of those book reader LED lights with a flexible handle with just one LED source on the top. That way you can fit both in your hand—the light and the phone. The other hand will be responsible just for zooming and the button. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is how it looks in action.
I didn't play too much time with this, but I am sure the following summer will bring lots of more microphotos when all of that microbiological life emerges, but it is amazing what exactly you can stumble upon in your front yard or balcony in just a couple of hours. In the image below to the right, when I pointed the lens toward the rose's stem, I thought I would get only some sort of reddish plant spores, but instead my memory card was filled with tiny and not too adorable rose lice. In other words, if you make this, prepare to be surprised at what exactly you might find in there.
 |
 |
Therefore, I advise practicing first with non-live objects in your own household, like in the above example of pencil tops, and believe me, exercising is what you really need to do, simply because zooming out of focus is just one tiny move of your finger or even a significant breath or hesitation. Anyway, I will be adding more images to this gallery in the future, and besides the embedded images in this post, there are more in the web gallery.
In today's update, the story goes further into the microworld, and this time with a cheap 'consumer' digital microscope. I bought one for Viktor's 11th birthday earlier this year, and during this entire spring we played with it a lot. In quality and zooming, it was more or less in the realm of the DIY smart microscope I made and described in the post. However, it brought to the scene its own powerful LED lights, and with its pencil-like shape, it was more controllable and applicable. The downside was that it was far beyond smartphone camera quality, and the number of pixels was not too high to capture quality videos, but still, its educational value was out of the question.
This new addition to the post imagery was actually a video from Viktor's YouTube channel, zViktor22, where he tested the microscope with various plants, food, money, fabrics, insects, and more from our country village, household, his 5th grade herbarium, and our front yard. I also included our old smart microscope photos and the caterpillar video from the initial post to complete the story about what it's possible to do with little effort and cheap technology.
Original post: May 2014, Update: June 2018.
Smart Microscope:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TNng7utQTw1zb3GK8