Macro photos. They are a wonder, reproducing things at life size or larger and giving us a unique view and a bit of a better understanding of our "Gulliver" status compared to little creatures.

Meet Lilit, king of Lilliput

A little while ago I was quite interested in making a macro lens for my phone camera...not out of necessity since it takes pretty crummy shots, but just for the fun of it. I had seen a few of these online and they were (in my opinion) pretty ugly. I set out to make one better and more beautiful, and I chose to do this not because it is easy but because it is hard....so anyways, the first task was to acquire a small curved lens. I got my girlfriends brother to help me out and so it began.
Plan I: We tried first with the tiny plastic focus plate from the laser under an old mouse (I am of course not referring to the ancient ball type mice, nor to it's furry living cousin above.) It was very small and looked like it would be a mission to attach to anything, not to mention very convex. We gave it a try and got it all smoothed out and then decided to attach it to a rubber washer. I needed a way to mount this on my phone so came up with a pretty ugly contraption of 1mm metal wire bent and shoved into the washer, and then some electrical tape to keep it from scratching up my phone. Here it is:

Prototype 1

I'm not gonna lie, it was about as good-looking as a Fiat multipla, but I was pretty proud of our work. I took a few shots with it, which was pretty tough as the plane of focus is so tiny and it's HARD to keep a camera steady at this magnification. Here are some shots that were not completely atrocious.
Not too bad for handheld, and I was pretty excited by what you can see on for example the drill bit at bottom left. One not-too-terrible side effect, was the black vignette from the rubber housing. I had smoothed the angle of view into a bit of a cone from the lens outward, but it still needed something to attach to so I was left with a tiny sliver of black. Then, disaster struck. I tried to attach the lens to the washer with a tiny bit of super glue, but I guess I didn't know the definition of tiny. 

Yep. Covered half the lens. Genius. There was no way to use this now so it was back to the drawing board.

Plan II: I needed an old camera...I asked around, scoured high and low, and even rifled through several random drawers, but to no avail. I finally got an old Pentax from my girlfriends mom which I stripped apart with much interest and managed to locate one or two lenses that would do very nicely. I also wanted to make a better frame this time as prototype1 had been weak and uUugly. I eventually chose a lens that had a nice curve and a bit of a fat edge to assist me and my super-glue mad hands, and to do away with the rubber washer. I spent a while looking through all my electrical wires and found a great bit of black insulated 3mm copper wire. Using some needle nose and regular pliers, I carefully worked it into a strong frame that was not too bulky but still strong, aesthetic, and easy to attach/detach. Here is the final product:
This is a perfect fit for my LG Optimus Black, but you really can bend it to any shape and size to fit any phone (maybe not those weird mid-phone cameras). Make sure you get enough of a curve to cover at least 2/3 around the diameter and then just pop some glue on and you're good to go. It has been solid since I made it, but if you have a small hard case to keep it in, this'll obviously be the best. I keep it in my glasses case. This was one of my favorite projects and actually very easy. I think I could sell these :-) Here is a collage of some shots I've taken since making this macro lens: