Diy zoom lense from a smartphone?

TaylorN

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I know this one seems like a weird request, but does anyone have any recommendations for a telephoto lens that I could hack onto this camera to increase the zoom.

I imagine one of the smartphone lenses sold on amazon,etc would work. Probably just need to get one dimensionally wide enough so it can capture enough light to send to the wide angle lense of this camera without the wide angle capturing the sides of the telephoto lens. Probably need to buy a couple different ones to experiment.

And it doesn't have to be very telephoto, maybe just a 2x.

Any thoughts, ideas, etc?

Looking forward to the creative thoughts from this forum
 
I imagine the smartphone ones will be too small and you will just get a small circle of image in the middle of the frame, even for a X2.

You could try a "GoPro telephoto lens kit" like: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/201559381072
You could also replace the lens by a narrow angle one which would be neater and give better results, however it is quite likely not to fit the hole in the case.
 
To get things to appear in the footage as you see it live with your eyes, i think a 6 - 8 mm lens is the solution, but using such a lens you have a much narrower FOV.
For the best of both worlds i would go for a 4 mm lens, thats around 90 degrees in FOV.

Got this video where i play with a fjew lenses, its not put together that smart but i think you can get the feeling anyway, maybe open the same video in 2 windows to better compare.

As you can see in the last half comparing my Lukas LK-7500 and its wide angle to the 0806 with a cheapo 8 mm lens do put you closer to the car in front with the 8 mm, and it allso appear that way to me in my little snubnosed car, right behind another car it do take up much of what i can see out the window


I would like a camera with a good 8 mm lens to sit beside my other front camera with the wide angle lens, should give me a much better chance of capturing a plate or somthing further ahead of me.
 
No you have to take the camera apart and unscrew the original lens ( there is a video about how to do it on a gopro camera in the link )

Peau have a wide range of lenses, most of them beeing the M12 fine thread, most dash / action / cctv cameras use.
http://www.peauproductions.com/collections/mega-pixel-lenses

You might allso be able to find lenses elsewhere on the internet, just have to be sure its the M12 fine thread ( there is no other thread thats simmilar looking and in size so little chance of buying the wrong kind of lens )
Just make sure its a good megapixel lens for at least 2 megapixel sensors, as you can see some of ther lenses is for 10 megapixel, and higher is no problem at all, if you can find it a 25 megapixel lens would be fine too.

The original lenses in cameras are often secured with hot glue to make sure focus dont shift, and a fjew use a set screw in the socker where you screw the lens into.
You do not want to use any super glue, first of all it will never come apart if you need to change somthing and the fumes of that stuff ruin lenses coating.

There should also be plenty of how to videos on leans-change on things on youtube, action camera or dashcam in this regard its pretty much the same.
The camera housing on the SGZC12RC should come apart pretty easy, i suspect its only a couple of screws that make sure the plastic shell stay in place around the little PCB with the lens on it.
I think @niko have a picture of the camera unit taken apart.

There is the click on lenses for phones, but i doubt they will work on a dashcam even if you are able to click it in place on the dashcam. Allso i suspect those kind of click on tele lenses are pretty low grade, and "ruiening" a fine camera like the SGZC12RC with a poor lens would be a shame.

You might want to take a look at the 90 deg lens Gitup sell for ther GIT2 actioncamera, they allso sel it loose and it is a alright lens it seem ( about 4 mm if my memory serve me right )

PS. when focussing lenses like this the sweet spot is pretty small, lucky the SGZC12RC have a screen so you can use that when dialing in the new lens.
For the last micro ajustments you have to make a mark of some sort on the lens ring and then ajust 0.5 mm back and forth to nail it ( looking at the recorded footage on a full size monitor as i doubt you can see the little stuff on the small monitor )

It do take a little trial and error, so i would not assembel the camera unit again before you are sure you have the sweet spot and have secured the lens to the socket with a little hot glue or tightening the screw if the SGZC12RC have one of those.

I dont think you have to take a drive for each test, you might be able to just hold the PCB in the hand in the car while you record somthing across the street, house numbers fences and so on should give a indication if you are on or near to the sweet spot.
 
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Thanks again for all the info! I will definitely be looking into this!
 
The new lukas/Qvia have a 3X zoom lens on it, not sure how good it is as its pretty new, and how the automatic zoom cope with traffic.
Plus its a whole other ballgame in regard to form factor as its the usioal huge chunk of metal in the windscreen ( not that its the zzoom lens that make it big )
http://lukashd.com/dashcam/product_info/dash-cam-dashcam_z970wd.html
 
Interesting! Thanks for sharing
 
what "cheapo 8 mm lens" did you buy (where,what, how much)? it doesn't looks bad at all. Probably worth buying a few cheapo lenses ($15/piece) for testing versus a moderately expensive ($40-50) peauproductions lens which might be from the same manufacturer :)

have you tried a peauproductions lens?
 
I cant remember where i got that one, i have a fjew lying around from when my personal cctv gear was of the old low resolution kind.
Not that a cctv lens for the old low resolution cameras cant be expensive too, but you can allso find them pretty cheap with lenses made of plastic.
The plastic ones will proberly allso be prone to heat related focus shifting that is a problem when too cheap lenses is used in dashcameras to make them cheaper.

I know there is a lot of lenses to be found on ebay, and proberly amazon too, starting prices should be as low as 1 - 2 dollars.

No i havent tried one of peaus lenses but i have added then to my bookmerks in the case i get to a place in my life where i can afford buying anything again.
But for a long while now i have been forced to just try and survive and dive into my little savings to make ends meet every month.

Search ebay with: cctv + lens or cctv + megapixel + lens

The lenses that pop up is either the 12 mm you need or the other C/CS format thats allso popular in cctv cameras but the kind you cant use as its a much larger thread.

I expect you beeing stateside should mean you could find some cctv wholesale places too, and those should also carry a slew of different cctv lenses.
 
I am sorry to hear about your financial pressures. But that is all the more reason to try to find a less expensive lens :) It seems like Peau lenses might be severely marked up.

I found the following lenses that are sold here in the USA and seem like they might work:
http://www.marshall-usa.com/optical/lenses/ccd_cmos/44.php

What's your take on those specs?

And B&H Photo/Video seems to sell them for a more reasonable ~$20 a piece instead of Peau's $40 a piece:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...V4408020HR_V_4408_0_2_0_HR_1_3_M12_Mount.html
Note the photo of the product on bhphotovideo's website looks like a photo of the wrong product. It says CS-mount on the lens. Is CS-mount the same as an S-mount?

I'd really like to try the 6mm and 8mm but would prefer not to spend that much money with experimenting on Peau's. If I could find a decent $20 lens, I'd probably make that my new standard setup... Two SGZC12RC/panorama-X1/MateGo-G600 in each car since the remote camera has such a small footprint.
 
No the CS and C mount is the same larger thread i think, the diff in those i think is the distance the lens sit from the sensor, they are somthing like 1 inch in diameter, much larger than the M12 / S-mount lenses.

In general its with lenses like with smartphones, you can get 2 thats more or less the same on the specs, but one is made in Chins and only cost 80 buks where the other is allso made in China but cost 500 buks as it have a apple on it, and granted allso made by better parts to a higher standart than the China phone.

In the small lenses for cctv cameras and action cameras i think Carl Zeiss is the top of the line, but it is hard to tell if ther higher price is worth it compared to a lens made by another high end manufacturer.

I am sure @jokiin thats the guy behind the Street Guardian brand have gone thru a slew of lenses to get to the optimal price/performance for his dashcameras, sure he could have slapped the most expensive Carl Zeiss lens on it and be done with it, but then his cameras would have a whole other price i guess.

Those Marchall lenses dont look half bad with my knowlege, but if i was you i would still just go with 1 lens to start off with, if they dont perform as you like then you have only wasted mony for 1 or only have 1 to offload on amazon/ebay.

It is allso a little "so so" with changing lenses on dash / action cameras, the build in dewarp might be coded to the lens the camera come with, and other stuff / functions might allso me tied up in some degree to the original lens.
But i have never heard about any one getting a worse result if they used a good lens offcourse, using a plastic 2 dollar lens will offcourse yeald a worse result as it is that cheap for a reason.

I think the lenses peau carry have been tried out by them, and found to be useable for photographers in general, so i must assume they have been thru a lot of lenses over the years.
Offcourse peau could just carry the whole most expensive Carl Zeiss range and be done with it, but i assume they did ther best to find lenses regular ppl are willing to buy too, there would be little sence in just catering to a small marked segment of professional photographers.

But it is indeed :eek: some lenses carry the same price as your high end dashcam or action camera.
 
Thank you @kamkar1 for all the info!

I bought a bunch of different (returnable) lenses (different manufacturers and FOVs [4, 6, and 8mm]) to test. I was initially going to get one from peauproductions.com but they were like $40 plus shipping and I had some other parts I wanted to buy for this project (for 2 cars), so I wanted to keep the costs down as much as possible.

I ended up with an 8mm by ACTi Corp sold through BHPhotoVideo.com ($21):
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1027501-REG/acti_plen_4103_fixed_focal_8_0mm_f1_8.html

Please note the ACTi Corp 6mm version does not work with this camera, the optimal focal distance is too long so you can't even screw in the lens to get a sharp focus, the barrel isn't long enough:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1027502-REG/acti_plen_4104_fixed_focal_6_0mm_f1_8.html

Though the Arecont 6mm fits fine, but is almost twice as expensive ($35). The one from peauproductions.com would probably be more desireable considering it already has a IR filter installed, but I am apprehensive to recommend it because I have not physically tested it, and after finding that the ACTi 6mm doesn't work with this camera even though the 8mm does work, I learned not to count on them all working out even if they technically fit:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ..._vision_mpm6_0_m12_mount_6mm_f_1_6_fixed.html

None of the ones I purchased came with a IR Filter, so I took a shot at a pair of non-returnable ones from ebay ($2.50/each arrived in two weeks):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/291692549090
I carefully installed the IR filter glass with epoxy.

Unrelated to the lenses I also purchased right-angle micro-usb adapters ($4/each arrived in two weeks):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/151704602277
...and a micro-usb slot extender ($7.50 arrived in two weeks):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/262361512811
Image1522889.jpg Image-993096388.jpg Image1014085002.jpg Image1200495210.jpg Image-1556951071.jpg
 
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Looking good :cool:
 
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