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The Homemade Lens Primer

Nikon, Canon, Leica, Pentax, Sigma, Tokina, and a host of other lens makers are all striving to bring you the sharpest lenses with all optical aberrations reduced to the minimum. That's too bad! Because with lenses, as with life, sometimes it's the imperfections that make things interesting.

The image on the right was shot with the imperfect optics of a homemade lens. Exploring the soft, dreamy world of DIY camera lenses in surprisingly easy. Let's get started.


There are two components necessary for a homemade camera lens suitable for use on a SLR or DSLR: the optics (to focus the light) and the mechanics (to hold the optics in place and hopefully provide a method of adjusting the focus and aperture).

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