As part of my U3A photography group project, under the heading of ‘Symmetry’, I thought I would try using a Kaleidoscope and photograph through the eyepiece. Apart from the image not being quite symmetrical, there were other issues that need to be accommodated. I tried a number of different lenses, and my phone’s camera, to try and get a ‘perfect’ image.
Not so easy as it sounds…
So let’s start with a 27mm lens on my APS-C camera. Closest focusing gives me this:
The best crop I could manage was this:
Not much of a view but it is sharp. This is how I set the camera up – notice the gap between the lens and kaleidoscope due to the closest focussing distance:
Next I am showing the view using an 80mm macro lens:
This gets me closer so there is more to see. This is the cropped (and rotated) version and is nice and sharp:
And this is the setup. The lens is a lot closer to the kaleidoscope than the 27mm lens:
I also tried using the camera on my phone – I used the macro feature of the camera:
This gets me in close and it is is OK but lacks detail. The following photo shows that it is right up close to the Kaleidoscope:
For this next image I tried a budget 50mm enlarger lens attached via bellows to the camera. This allowed me to get the lens close to the viewing hole on the Kaleidoscope:
This gave a wider field of view. Sharpness is OK but could be better. This is the setup – note that this lens is inside the bellows:
The final trial was using a vintage Wray 3.75inch enlarger lens:
This is OK with reasonable sharpness but has a narrow field of view. The setup is this:
I have one other lens to try; a have a better quality vintage enlarger lens which is worth a go.
Here is a #imagedump of the photos taken, you may notice other images that I have taken:
This has been an interesting exercise and I have learned a lot…