If you every play with webcams you quickly discover that the field of view just isn’t what is should be. These guys have put together a nice little hacking tutorial on how to mate a door peephole lens with an ordinary low end digital camera. Now I’ve been doing this for some time, either with peepholes like these guys or with some random lenses that I happen to have in my junk box (meniscus, plano convex, convex, etc.). Years ago I used to have a web cam pointed at a TV with a plano concave lens taped in front of it to expand the field of view. Worked great, it was fun to mess with. Adding a super wide angle lens to a low end camera will yield some pretty cool results, I suggest that you run out and pick a few peepholes up, they don’t cost much. I got mine and Home Depot for around $5USD. Heat up the hot glue gun and have fun!
[via Hack-a-day]
The Aggregate: Fisheye Digital Imaging For Under Twenty Dollars
a much much better way to do this is to spend $20 on a super-wide angle digi camera (cctv or car reversing camera) and rip its lens out. its much higher quality and will just screw straight into the threaded lens mount that is already firmly attached to the circuit board.
professional quality fisheye fitted as if it was meant to be there.
I guarentee you’ll be more impressed with the image quality if you try my hack!
Has anyone ever turned a point and shoot into a web cam? what about a wireless web cam?