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How to Zoom in on Your Homemade Fisheye

A homemade fisheye lens is a cheap alternative to the costly ones produced by camera and optics manufacturers. While the image quality can't compete with a professional lens, the homemade fisheye is a fun way to experiment with a wide, distorted field of view. The fisheye effect is created by attaching a door peephole viewer to the lens of a point-and-shoot or DSLR camera. This combination causes vignetting, or dark, blurry corners in the resulting image. By zooming in slightly, you'll be able to reduce vignetting and increase image quality.

Things You'll Need

Electrical tape (optional)
Door peephole viewer

Instructions

- 1
  Attach your homemade fisheye to your camera. Depending on the construction of your fisheye and the type of camera you're using, electrical tape may be required for mounting. Avoid covering any part of the lens, LCD screen or menu buttons if you use tape.
- 2
  Power on the camera and switch it to your desired shooting mode, such as landscape or portrait. Preview your field of view using the LCD screen.
- 3
  Zoom in until the vignetting begins to disappear out of the frame. On point-and-shoot cameras, push the collar around the shutter button clockwise to zoom in. On DSLR cameras, rotate the zoom ring on the lens barrel until vignetting recedes.
- 4
  Take several test shots and adjust the zoom until you reach the desired effect.

Photography