A while ago i said that i would, hopefully, be having a piece of Black ABS nylon machined down to fit over the MM3 eyepiece and have a flange left on the outside to glue to an iphone4s case. Unfortunately my mate is busy down at his engineering firm and he has a steady queue of mutual friends turning up to have little bits and bobs done and his business partner has put the block on
'freebies' so i was faced with 2 hours labour (it's not that really, once the machine is set up) @ £30 per hour reduced to a 'mate-rate' of 50% reduction which is still 30 big ones:eek!:
Having bought the 'scope and been given an out-of-contract phone i only wanted to adapt for digi-scoping for holidays and bird records as i do not routinely carry gear about for photographing as tbh i don't see anything worth snapping! I went back to my original plan of finding or adapting a suitable piece of tube/cap and glueing it to a secondary iphone case and taking it from there.
This i did. I used the cap from a urine sample container (that's what i call taking the p1ss) marking an aperture for the lens and cutting it out with a craft knife. I had to remove the inside thread of the cap to ensure it fitted snugly and further down the lens. I have to remove the rubber shroud around the eyepiece to allow the cap to fit against the metal but this just comes off with the lens cap easily anyway.
Considering the new Red cap cost 20p (and i still have the container), the superglue 10p and the case nothing i am more than pleased with the cost of the conversion:eek!: I used a complete tube of glue to bond the new cap to the old case, i would estimate about 1 1/2 square inch of bonding area and a generous several applications around the edge bond. This seems pretty strong, as expected, and is both light and slim in profile.
A firm push fits it over the MM3 lens and then a slight adjustment to make it sit square so there is an even vignetting. A slight tap and expansion to about 2x on the phone removes the vignetting and then whatever zoom is required. Focussing is obviously carried out by the scope and there is the very useful fine-focus facility. My only problem was the fact that i wear glasses, one for close and one for distant. I wear my distant for birding and look straight thru my Zeiss 7x42 BGAT as these are designed for spectacle wearers but raise them on to my forehead for the MM3. My problem was that altho i am using the scope focus i need to be able to see the camera back which was not sharp enough so i will need to take my reading glasses out with me - more gear! A small glitch.
Bear in mind that these were the first attempts. I only used a monopod which was leant against some metal railings. The iphone is extremely touch-sensitive which, coupled with a tripod, should yield some good results with a bit of practice. This should open up a great range of possibilities for recording local stuff, any twitched rarities and tons of stuff from abroad instead of the endless veiws, bars, more views, more bars and...........Moroccan camels
Attached is a picture of the original ABS plus the new Red cap and a montage of some local Black Headed Gulls.
P.S. I went to see a relatively local Pacific Golden Plover ystda but it was'nt close enuff in the heavy heat haze:C
Laurie:t: