If you’re into anything that has to do with photography, Photojojo is an amazing site full of DIY tips, tricks, and projects for all aspects of picture-taking. This idea reminds me of the old slide shows that people used to put together for loved ones – remember those? Next time you go on a vacation or dig up a bunch of old family photos, you too can have a slide show… Using your smartphone! How seriously cool is that? All you need is about $1 worth of materials and a blank wall, and it’s like you’ve got a little movie theatre in your pocket! (Got Netflix on your phone? Grab some popcorn and have a movie night!) Projectors are also handy when you are trying to enlarge an image for a project, such as painting a logo on a wall. This might be the handiest use for a cardboard box you’ve ever seen! [how to turn your smartphone into a projector]
Project estimate:
- Smartphone, on hand
- Magnifying glass, $1
- Cardboard box, on hand
- Paper clip, on hand
- Black paint, on hand or $1
- Electrical tape, on hand or $1
Total: $1 and up
8 Comments
Kathy V.
Wow!
martisanne
wow can’t wait to try this out
anne orozco
total fail. my son was so dissapointed.
did it work for you? thanks
heather
@anne — I haven’t tried it yet. Thanks for reporting back with your results. What did it look like?
RCM99
It was very blurry
Chris
Ours failed too :( We were disappointed. We had no picture at all. Any tips?
Thanks!
Brad
it worked for me. I used a Nike shoe box and a 3 inch diameter magnifying glass. The Nike shoe box had two layers so I could actually fit it into the hole that I cut. The SECOND magnifying Glass I taped right in front of it, It was still in the metal frame like the one taped to the front of the box in the illustration. The picture will still be a little blurry but you can fix that when you can figure out how to separate the two magnifying glasses from each other creating a finite focus. so add 1 more magnifying glass to the front of the box and it will work. I bought my magnifying glasses from ACE hardware they were a dollar and they were real glass which is hard to find. everything else I did exactly the same. I am going to build a wooden box that will do the same so I can get the finite focus because this idea is FANTASTIC
K.W. Leslie
Like Brad indicated, you’re likely gonna need more than one magnifying glass. If you’re using only one lens, make sure it’s a biconvex lens (curved inward on both sides).
Or you can skip the lenses altogether: Poke a hole in the box with a pin. Works just as good.
And the bigger you want the image, the dimmer it’s going to be. The rule of thumb is: Twice as big, four times as dim. So darken the room first.