Hasta La Ideas

How can something that beautiful (above) be captured with something this ugly (below)? Those unbelievably detailed macro photographs of snowflakes captured by Alexey Kljatov were shot with this monstrosity:

A conventional lens set-up to achieve shots like Kljatov’s could run you in the thousands, but the clever Moscow-based shooter hacked this together on the cheap, all from obsolete equipment. He took a common, unremarkable Helios 44M-5 lens (a Soviet-era Carl Zeiss derivative that can be had for less than US $30 on eBay!) and somehow figured out that if you flip it around backwards, then place it against the lens of a common Canon Powershot A650 in Macro mode, you get some pretty awesome zoom. (The A650, a camera whose heyday was the year 2007, goes for less than US $200 on eBay.)

Kljatov then mounted his Canon to a wooden slat by drilling a single hole and driving a screw into the tripod mount. The Helios was then attached to the board with strapping tape, with the makeshift connection then “protected” from light leaks and weather using a cut-up garbage bag.

Still not impressed? Of his two shooting surfaces, one is an upside-down stool and a piece of glass, and the other is what looks like an old wool sweater. (And his lighting source, not pictured, is a freaking flashlight.)

Yet from these most ghetto-tastic of set-ups, Kljatov can start with these…

(more…)