DIY Porthole - Dip your camera lens into the Water!

[Enderturtle]

Sooo I made my own tube for dipping my camera lens into the water.

As some of you may know Water Refracts Light and makes it annoying to take underwater pictures outside of water. Gets blurry.

That's why you have to be perpendicular to your subject when photographing something that's in water.

Dipping your lens allows you to take pictures at any angle without refraction. Fidel correct me if I'm wrong.

What's available



MY DIY Project
3-inch PVC from Home Depot ~ 10$
Nylon Screws from Lowes ~ 2$
Tap and drill set from Home Depot ~ 10$
Circle piece of Acrylic from Tap Plastics ~ 3$

I used Gorilla Glue which most say is not reef safe....but I don't care. It's cured and I only dip the lens for a couple minutes.

Future builds will use Weld-on 16 which works but not the absolute best for PVC to Acrylic bonding.

 

[Enderturtle]

Here are some sample pictures I took with this thing.

Canon Rebel T2i
18-55 mm lens
Lens Extension Tube.

RAW Files processed in Adobe Lightroom.

 

[muhli]

That's pretty neat

 

[Nav]

Awesome! I need one

 

[Colin Rose]

Neat trick... I foresee a trip to home depot in my near future.

 

[Enderturtle]

Important tip though: Always be careful when sticking your lens in the water.

It's very easy to get carried away with taking pictures and submersing your lens past the tube.


I will be making a couple of these for sale and raffling some off at the Photography Workshop.

 

[Colin Rose]

I know exactly what you mean. That's totally something I would do.

Question: Why not use superglue to avoid the risk?

 

[Enderturtle]

Superglue the cap onto the PVC?

Superglue definitely does NOT bond acrylic to PVC very well.

Doing some research, I found that Weldon 16 and 32 are good for bonding PVC to acrylic. But the question is: Will it bond it well enough AND seal the cap to the tube well enough?


I did some research on if Gorilla Glue is reef-safe. Most people have said no especially in the long term application. Some people said they used Gorilla Glue to glue their rock aquascape together :O omg. Yeah definitely not reef safe in that aspect.

But I let the glue cure in open air for over 48 hours. Also I only dip the tube in my tank for 1-2 minutes at a time.

There's definitely a better method for bonding PVC to acrylic but I haven't figured it out yet. I'm going to try Weldon 16 for the next tube I make.

 

[Colin Rose]

Got it. I didn't realize super glue wouldn't work.

 

[sjbro]

Doesn't Tap Plastics sell acrylic tubes?

 

[sfsuphysics]

Doesn't Tap Plastics sell acrylic tubes?

Yes they are, but depending upon how wide and how long it can get expensive, the upside is they will cut only what you need. I did something similar with with my camera, granted not anywhere as nice a camera as Ender's but it still makes for fantastic shots when you can shoot from the top and do so from under the water level. Ideally you want your lens to be resting right up against the acrylic.

Before that I did something similar with a piece of acrylic and old coral container/cup (small one), it looked... very well hand made The trick is to scuff up the area of the acrylic and then superglue works awesome.

 

[Enderturtle]

Yeah but you want the right tube size to fit your lens.

Some lenses are bigger than others.

 

[rcaron20]

I need one of these sooo bad I just posted a wwc bounce for sale on eBay and had the hardest time taking photos of it. Did you try using epoxy once that dries its safe right?? I'm going to try to make one I'll post a photo when its don't probably won't be until next weekend tho unless I get off work early one day o and enderturtle the bird of paradise I got from the frag swap is looking great I'll be sure to take a photo of that to show off how my new toy works

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[tygunn]

I think its nice to have the black sides to avoid light spill through the sides... At least that seems to make sense to me.

Nice job! I think top-down shots are one of the most amazing ways to REALLY see your corals' true colors.

My fav shot from my old 140g tank is the top down shots I took of my hammer and frogspawns:

 

[Enderturtle]

Wow what is that green coral on the bottom right?

 

[tygunn]

Wow what is that green coral on the bottom right?

The coral on the bottom right is a galaxia. Quite possibly one of my favorite corals I've had. It looks pretty benign but I had to keep it down in the center of the tank on the sand bed far from anything else as it put out 8-12" sweepers for feeding at night. Fascinating coral.

 

[Enderturtle]

Here's another picture I took with the tube + extension tube

 

[tygunn]

Wowowwow! Your colors are absolutely incredible!!!!

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[Vhuang168]

Very cool! I've come close to buying the commercial product a few times.


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