Building a Next-Level Camera

this is an old episcope lens and it was used in very early projection devices only instead of projecting a pre-recorded image like a modern projector does it projected light that was actually bounced off physical objects placed behind it sadly they don't have much use anymore for projection as technology has somewhat moved on but leaving a lens like this unused is a massive shame as this lens type has an exceptionally special characteristic when used to capture images instead that there's presently no replacement for you see when a camera lens is being designed a key factor that needs to be considered is the size of the cone of light that exits its rear as this has to be large enough to cover the imaging sensor it's intended to be used with smartphones for example often utilize tiny imaging sensors to make sure that this lens cone can be nice and small too which keeps the whole system very compact as for the episcope lens it needed to physically fit objects like books within its cone in order to project them so it had to be very large and from my tests it's a whopping 500 millimeters in diameter that's literally a half meter imaging circle to put this into perspective here's the imaging circle from the cone of a typical smartphone camera and here's the imaging circle from the cone of the episcope lens yeah we're going to have to zoom out it's just that big it's this gigantic imaging circle that should allow the lens to capture images that just aren't possible on anything in production right now but ironically it's also the biggest hurdle in getting any image out of it at all as there's presently no imaging sensor large enough that can capture the whole thing in one go but where there's a will there's a way you see when held in front of a flat surface we can actually observe the light that this lens gathers so in theory we can just grab any random camera and take a photo of this projection right well that's possible but doing so would result in not only a distorted image as we'd be viewing it to one side but it would also be very dark and noisy due to photographing bounced light rather than direct light a better way could be to have the lens project onto a thin semi-transparent screen and then capture this from behind resulting in a brighter and less distorted image now this is tracing paper but upon close inspection it actually has quite a rough texture to it that would degrade the image quite a bit so i've ultimately settled on some thin diffuser film as it has a much finer grain structure to make it rigid it can be sandwiched between two pieces of acrylic the reason it looks blue is because i'm leaving the protective film on for now so that i don't get fingerprints all over it holding this behind the lens we can now actually see an image although one that's somewhat vague and washed out draping some black fabric over it makes it much more vivid and this is starting to look promising although it's kind of hard to tell due to the fabric blocking some of the image and also it being difficult to hold precisely in position so we need to build a frame for which i thought it's high time i try out some of these fancy v-slot aluminum extrusions these are really intended for homemade sliding rails for 3d printers and the like but as they can be attached together with various fittings they're perfect for this project too speaking of 3d printers this project will benefit immensely from using one due to the precision they offer and the first batch of parts are simply some clips for the acrylic screen which have been designed to slide down into the v-slot a similar method can be used for some extra clips on the adjacent edge and you'll see what these are for in just a minute with all these added they can be clamped around the acrylic and voila a custom framed light screen before we can project an image onto it though we do need a way of blocking out unfocused light and instead of using fabric like we did earlier i'm going to use some sheets of aluminium as they can also support the lens structurally now as they're required to be quite a complex shape i've made a 3d prototype on sketchup first to get the required angles now although these are quite reflective it's fairly easy to deal with that by just simply sticking on some fabric to the inside after which they can be held in place on the light screen with the extra clips that were printed earlier inserting some threaded inserts into a 3d printed end cap is a great way to hold them together and as you can see i've made two of these shrouds one to hold the lens and one to hold a camera this has been done to allow for focus control as with simple lenses like this physically moving it closer and further away from the screen is the only way to focus it on something close or something distant to make this mechanism smooth and consistent though i'm going to use a set of linear bearings and steel rods these bearings have tiny steel balls inside a track that allows them to slide smoothly along the rods even when lateral weight is applied to make them easy to mount i've designed a custom sleeve for them although as it's quite a tight fit a vise is necessary to get them installed thanks to the v-slots these again are really easy to mount in place and with them all added this mechanism looks like it's going to work brilliantly pretty cool so i think it's time we test this out so one side can have the lens installed leaving the other free for us to peer through not great the corners here are extremely dark so much so that it basically nullifies the special characteristic that this lens has and you probably can't even spot it yet if you don't know what to look for so it's time for some problem solving but doing so while hungry is for me at least never a good idea so i'm happy that we've reached the ad portion of this video as it's being sponsored by hellofresh with hellofresh you can get everything you need to prepare wholesome delicious meals delivered right 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wholesome food now the problem we're having here with vignetting actually reminds me a lot of the time we encountered it on the diy projector project and i have a feeling that the solution for that should fix this as well and that was to use fresnel lenses you see when light exits our lens it spreads out in the familiar cone shape and then hits the screen as it's semi-transparent much of the light still passes through and continues spreading out as a cone and as we're photographing this from the back our camera really only gets a few direct rays from the middle of the lens resulting in the vignetting this is where the fresnel lens can come into play as placing one in front of the screen actually can straighten out the incoming rays of light assuming that its focal length roughly matches that of the lens this helps a lot but unless the screen is observed from quite a distance vignetting will still be present so we need to add yet another fresnel lens after the screen that can then take these parallel light rays and converge them to a point so long as the camera observes the screen from this point there should be very little light lost and vignetting should be eliminated before testing it out though i do want to make an extra addition here you see during the test i found it difficult to focus precisely by manually changing the distance between the two sections so i want to make it mechanical the mechanism i've come up with for this is fairly simple and it's going to be based around the use of lead screws and nuts by forcing a collet onto the nut it allows it to be embedded into a bearing which can in turn be embedded into a 3d printed shroud thanks to the bearings both of these nuts turn freely and the idea behind this is for them to have some 3d printed cogs mounted to them so that when one turns one way the other will turn in the opposite direction by installing a geared low rpm motor and adding a final cog to its spindle it's possible to turn these nuts in either direction which is just what we need this can then be fitted inside a case which as you can see features a tripod plate on the bottom and some steel rails these rails offer yet more bearing mounts and these are what are going to connect it to the frame although as they presently slide around with no purpose we need to control them which is where the threaded rods come into play by threading them through the nuts and clamping their far ends to the frame the central section appears to be immovable but that will change once we power up the motor for fine control over its rotation i'm using a little dc motor controller and joystick and to make it easy to hold i've printed off a casing for it with the handle being for some batteries leaving the top free to house the controller itself once closed up it's surprisingly comfortable to hold and as the joystick is analog it allows the focus to be adjusted at varying speeds as the mechanism works by two threaded rods the focusing action actually keeps the tripod plate centered retaining the center of gravity with that done there's really only one thing left to tackle which is the gap in the middle as this presently lets in adjacent light it'll wash out the image so it's important to black it out and to do this i've got a roll of black paper which can be folded over and over itself to make a corrugated shape by crimping each row at 45 degrees it allows them to be folded into 90 degree corners making for a pretty effective bellow system this bellow system should block out all unwanted light and give the image plenty of contrast so i think it's about time we test this thing out and see just why this episcopal lens is such a big deal so here's our base scene shot with a full frame camera there's a little bit of background blur to it thanks to the lens being wide open but the background of the shot is still fairly busy as i'm too far away from the camera for any significant amount of blur to occur even with a large aperture lens like it's being used swapping to our new camera rig however changes the scene entirely and there's a huge amount of background separation now despite my distance and it looks utterly unique and like nothing i've seen before this is what makes this lens such a big deal the fresnel lenses appear to have taken care of the vignetting now too and honestly it almost looks like a direct to sensor image rather than us photographing the screen from behind this is an incredible level of background separation and it allows for some really unique shots some of which appear to have a miniaturized scale to the eye this really is a special look and it gives scenes a dreamlike quality and i can imagine it having many uses for film productions music videos and particularly wedding photography because it projects onto a screen it doesn't actually matter what camera is used to record it as the effect of our special lens will still be present this means that it's even possible to use a smartphone with it perfect for some really unique looking social media posts it's worth noting too that although many smartphones now feature digital blurring effects they're not quite good enough yet to be particularly useful or reliable so this lens system has its place as its effect is all optical and not faked if you don't know much about photography you might not realize just how elusive this blur is to actually achieve optically to put it into perspective one of the fastest full frame lenses ever made is a 50 millimeter f 0.7 lens although undoubtedly better for low light capture due to its projecting direct to sensor even it can't reach these levels of subject separation as our special episcope lens in full frame terms has a crop factor of 0.08 that means that although it's a 432 millimeter f5 lens it actually performs in full frame terms the same as a 35 millimeter f 0.4 lens thanks to its exceptionally large imaging circle it's both wider and faster than the aforementioned holy grail of lenses and don't get me started on the cost difference between the two so all in this lens has a fantastic new use now and although it's quite big it's so unique that i think it's worth its weight in gold so i hope you've enjoyed this journey of photographic discovery and honestly i think the results with this lens are absolutely phenomenal and really there's no other way i can think of to get this kind of look and it's utterly unique so um if you want to make one of these yourself you can actually find in the description a link to a download packet or package um that has all the 3d files and measurements and things like that for you to make one yourself but other than that i'm matt you've been watching diy perks and i hope i see you next time goodbye for now oh and don't forget to pick up a hellofresh pack they are yummy

Channel: DIY Perks

Views: 3,205,092

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Id: 9cT0jXI7l4E

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022