Homemade Loupe

[dbane883]

I have a few hand held loupes that I use ranging from 7x to 15x. Cost of these have ranged from $10 up to $50. What bothers me most of all of them is the field of view. Because it's very difficult to get edge-to-edge sharpness, every loupe has distortion as you radiate out from the Centre. Some of my Bausch Lomb loupes are very good, but they are very small; roughly 1.5 cm at most.

Amateur photography is one of my other hobbies and I was staring at the macro filters on my desk the other day. So I decided to gang them up to see what would happen. To my surprise, it works great. I think the combination of 10x, 4x, 2x, and 1x works out to an equivalent of 15-20x mag factor (assume it's closer to 17x), and because these filters are 49mm wide, it's very easy to hold, has a wide field of view, and optically very good.

Here's a few pics:

I think my filters are of reasonable quality and total cost was about $100 but there are plenty of cheaper alternatives in the marketplace. For me, I don't have a use for these size filters anymore and they have now found a new purpose.

There is a loupe I considered last year called the "Loupe System", which is advertised to be bigger and better. But at $500-800 (!), WTF!

http://www.loupesystem.com/

But you can buy a similar kit like the one I put together here for roughly $10-20 from eBay. Not sure I'll ever buy a traditional loupe again.

[droptopman]

Dude!  That is awesome.  Look how much more field of vision you created there.  Super cool.  

I also looked at the loupe system, but the price turned me off.  Been looking for one to come up used, but have not seen any.  My carry is a BeIOMO and it is a decent loupe but the field of vision is pretty narrow.  I will try and build something like you have done.   

Nice work  

[Sogeha]

Excellent idea. My Dad was a professional photographer, so I'm sure there will be some of these in the attic.

[kernow]

Great idea

[Nightwatch]

Brillant idea, thanks for sharing:)

[RickFlorida]

On 6/23/2016 at 2:53 AM, Sogeha said:

Excellent idea. My Dad was a professional photographer, so I'm sure there will be some of these in the attic.

Ahhh.  Check for a real macro lens too then.

Edited July 26, 2016 by RickFlorida

[panerai153]

Probably pretty easy to find old closeup Macro lenses around. Price shouldn't be very expensive for good quality glass.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[hcaht]

Thank you so much for this!

No way I would have known or thought to try this setup. Really appreciate ideas like these.

Received an inexpensive set from Amazon yesterday and just had time to glance at it this morning. Neewer branded. I'd actually been looking at a macro lens for my mu4/3 camera and this saved me a lot of money.

Thanks again.

[Bart Cordell]

Perfect ! Just received this Neewer 52MM Kit Macro Close-up.

Thanks !