Ever used your iPhone to take a photo through the viewfinder of your camera? Or tried to line up the iPhone’s lens with one half of a pair of binoculars? Then you’ll know how hard it is to get a good result. But if you’re willing to sacrifice an old iPhone case and pony up a few dollars for an SLR eyepiece, then you can make an adapter that’ll get you great Instagrammatical pictures every time.
Many SLRs shipped with a cover for the eyepiece, designed to slip over and block off the viewfinder while you used the camera on a tripod. This would stop light entering through the back door and affecting the exposure meter.
There are also clip-on eyepieces with rubber rims to make it easier to use the camera whilst wearing specs.
However you get ahold of your eyepiece, you should just glue it over the camera hole of an old iPhone case, making sure to get the aspect ratio correct. Once the glue has set, you can then clip the iPhone onto the back of your camera and snap photos through its lens.
What you’re actually doing is snapping a picture of the focusing screen inside the camera’s pentaprism housing, so you’ll also get any markings that are present, but that just adds to the charm. You might also want to choose a manual focussing app because once you’ve focused on the screen, you’re done. Only the camera needs to be focused on the scene in front of you, not the phone.
This could also work using binoculars. In fact it could be even easier as you can use the lens cap off one of the eyepieces as the adapter, which will have also cut out all stray light coming in from the sides and lowering the contrast.
