Bug-Eyed Travel Photos with the $10 Fish Eye Lens

Amateur photographers will attest that digital SLR lenses cost way too much. Specialty lenses in particular – fish eye lenses, macros, wide angle, what have you – can be priced well north of $1000 US. Web forums and blogs have prompted a variety of DIY photography tipsters to crop up during the past two years. Pedro Mendes is one such hackster with some quick advice on crafting a fish eye lens for less than $10 US:

All you need for this effect is a $10 peephole for your front door, which you can get at any hardware store. I used a plastic pop bottle cap to attach it to my digital camera’s lens. Make a hole in the bottle cap and then screw your peep hole in the hole. Place the bottle cap over your lens (on my camera, the cap fits perfectly over the end of the lens.) The trick to make it work is zooming way in and usually setting your camera to macro.

The final product:

It ain’t beautiful but who cares when your photos can look like this:

Not too shabby for the price of a Domino’s pizza and a little elbow grease.