This is yet another delayed geek post; a major one at that. Remember the webcam that Syefri donated to me last year which I modified to become an infrared webcam?

I combined it with the Fujifilm Digital Q1 that Bernard donated to form a Frankenstein monster! Previously, I modified it to become an infrared digicam. However, it had a fixed-focus lens, and by removing the infrared-blocking filter, it became permanently near-focused.

I tried to cut and insert a similiarly-sized piece of glass to make it focus back on infinity, but it didn’t work.

Then it hit me! Why not put the manual focus lens of the webcam on the digicam instead?

And so, I took it apart again, to:

Left to right, top to bottom:

• I unscrewed the lens to get this.
• From the front.
• Left: The lens from the webcam, which was a manual focus lens; right: the fixed focus lens that originally came with the camera.
• The webcam lens on its lens mount.
• From left: camera, original infrared-blocking-filter-holder with three holes for screws, webcam lens mount with two holes for screws.
• The webcam lens mount on the camera, but with only one screw screwed in; the other side was filed away to fit in!

I had to file off the top surface of the webcam lens mount also to allow the components on the circuit board to fit on top of it.

Left to right, top to bottom:

• The webcam lens was blocked by the camera’s front plate, so I had to cut a hole to let the lens poke through.
• Swiss Army Knifes can be pretty handy.
• Camera with front plate surgery.
• This also allowed me to manually focus by turning the lens clockwise to bring it closer to the sensor, thus making the focus further, and turning the lens anti-clockwise would bring it further from the sensor, making it focus nearer.
• Left to right: Front plate bit, simple switch to adjust distance of fixed-focus lens to enable macro, the original F3.5 lens.
• The webcam, now without an eye, hangs itself. (How macabre of me.)

Left to right, top to bottom:

• The first shot I made once the manual focus lens was assembled; this was a macro picture of the front plate.
• The wonderful thing about this lens is that it has no aperture blades, thus keeping it fully circular, for beautiful bokeh! *
• Close up on guitar strings.
• I then tried my door-peephole-turned-fisheye on it.

* Of course, it also means that depth of field is always small. Since the webcam’s sensor was slightly smaller, I guess the lens was smaller too, thus giving an even smaller depth of field when moving to the Q1’s bigger sensor. I don’t know what aperture the manual focus lens is at, though my guess is that it’s at F3.5 as well, since the exposure seems to be the same.

Left to right, top to bottom:

• Artifacts from such a cheap webcam lens are obvious, like lens flare, like from this auto-focus beam from another camera.
• I always catch Broken Scar pointing at things; flare can be exploited in certain angles.
• The sun is black on the Q1’s CMOS sensor.
• Very bright lights cause scanlines to appear.

Another thing about its sensor is that it does not seem to expose everything at once, scanning downwards instead. That is why the camera seems to have captured the motion of the car! (This also accounts for camera phones, when you snap a picture when someone else’s camera flash goes off, you might see half your picture with flash and half without. It might explain Sherve’s freaky half-blur picture.)

If the skies are blue enough, you’ll still see blue.

Another thing about this lens is the horrible amount of vignetting and soft edges. However, it can be looked at as a tasteful thing.

From infinity focus…

…I manually focus nearer… (couldn’t resist changing the hue.)

…and this is as close as I can get. Yep, those are the tips of those leaves.

When precisely focused, images have a beautiful pop.

Vignetting and soft edges make for a portrait lens!

Shutter speeds are a lot faster, because there is a lot of infrared light in tungsten lighting. Shutter speeds are the same as a normal camera at night under flourescent lighting though, since that has no infrared.

The lens is softer to the left of the picture (when turned clockwise it blurs the top.)

Despite all these flaws, I love it. It’s like a digital lomo camera!

It is also;

– an infrared-enabled digital camera
– a manual focus digital camera (eat that, SLR owners!)
– a removable lens digital camera (though I haven’t looked around for lenses that fit.)

All pictures taken after July 19th 2006 were with the wonder of this. I don’t know if the flash capacitor is weaker, or there is something about the lens characteristics that makes infrared flash not as bright as before.

Alright, so I’ve had this since June, but figured I’d blog about everything else first.

This is a door peephole. I bought the biggest size for under RM40, with a viewing angle of 170 degrees.

But guess what happens when you put it in front of a camera! (Yes, that’s my pocketable Canon Powershot A520. I do not have a big camera!)

Fisheye, baby.

The distortion made the satellite dishes on the left look suggestive on the right. I had to get closer to get the dishes to fill up the frame. Note the strong chromatic aberration, or purple fringing.

This can be countered in Photoshop by going to Image – Adjustments – Hue/Saturation…, choosing the color channel closest to the purple fringing (usually Blue or Magenta) and then decreasing the Saturation and Lightness.

What if you took an already curved surface? More distortion!

A normal fisheye mirror…

…seen through a fisheye lens.

Surprisingly, the fixed focus front camera of my Nokia N70 wields decent results. Another issue with the fisheye is that the brass keeps it a distance from the lens, making it hard to have sharp focus at the center of the image. So I have to focus as close as possible, and choose as dark as aperture (F7.1 is safe) to get a sharper image.

And now, for a rare subject on my blog – people!

Left column, top to bottom: Guess whose skinny hand that is; Cheryl flashed at 1/500th of a second in Shutter Priority mode, so the background is properly exposed instead of being burnt out; Bryan Chin is smokin’; Jaya Jusco Equine Park is so empty, the security guards and cleaners take part in the contests.
Right column, top to bottom: Yes that’s right, the skinny hands belong to Davina, a (now very) skinny musical ensemble/arthouse film star/independent movie star, so please feed her so that she may regain her original weight (as in this picture with hippos stuck to her); Cheesie has nailed the art of advertising my phone; papparazzi.

Watching this guy walk was hilarious.

Oh, just one of those KL International Motorshow girls I happen to know, that’s all…

Shaz, behind a slanted polarizer, in Hartamas Square.

Slinky, after setting my camera’s white balance to a strong green wall.

It looks like Cheryl, sitting on the railing in the back, is sitting on Bryan’s head.

smashpOp knows no bounds when it comes to creative camwhoring.

Have you ever come back to your car to find drunken chicks on your boot?

Finally, pictures of… myself, reflecting.

Long exposures with the aid of a blue light. I don’t remember what the blue light was though!

As a bonus, here’s another quiz: Guess where this is, and which blogger I think the orange bear looks like! As always, the winner will get pimped with at least one paragraph.

Time for some long-procrastinated camera geeking.

So it was a hot drive down to Ampang, when I tried to capture the light distortion from the sizzling heat by putting a polarizer filter in front of my camera.

And whoa, what did I see? Rainbows!

Turns out that sunlight, which then reflects off coated surfaces on a car’s glass, is polarized…

…and when it comes through the polarizer filter, some wavelengths are cut off, causing the rainbow effect. However, it varies between car; a Perodua Rusa’s rainbow patterns are like grilles. This was shot from smashpOp‘s Proton Gen.2; you can see the coating’s effect on the sky, but it is most obvious against other cars.

What if you don’t have a coated window? What if you’re not shooting from inside a vehicle? Simple. Cut a piece of plastic from a plastic microwaveable box and tuck it in front of the polarizer filter.

And so, you can still shoot rainbows!

You may think that thick plastic may lower image quality, but it does fine, adding a soft diffuse effect to this picture (no color or levels adjustments made, to show the effect.)

Same goes for this dreamy evening.

An even more interesting idea would be to use a polarizer to shoot real rainbows; the effect of the rainbow might be maximized, or striped, depending on the angle. I can’t wait to find out.