I went through something like this last year, and I looked around online for something to solve the problem. But I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like almost all of them for one reason or another. Usually it was due to cheap, flimsy plastic. So I began again with the intent to solve the problem with something that I can make. So I’m showing a few ideas that I’ve come up with. These are solutions to holding a monocular to the back lens of a cell phone camera so that it won’t move and will take a good photo.
The first one I came up with is to use a piece of a 1-1/4 inch white plastic ell or tee. This will have to be sawed so that it has half of the ell or tee sawed off. This will leave a half cylinder facing against the phone back, and a half cylinder sticking out so that the monocular eyepiece can be wire tied to it. Looking at the letter L, it would be flipped upside down, and the back of the L would be against the phone back. The foot would stick out, to hold the eyepiece. Both back and foot would be a half cylinder. The phone back will also be tied to it with nylon wire ties.
Another idea is to use aluminum angle stock for holding the monocular eyepiece. A 90 degree angle will hold any size cylinder with a wire tie or two. This angle stock may be held against the phone back with wire ties, but it may be best to make some form of clamp that grabs the edge of the phone so that the screen will not have a wire tie across it.
Another add-on may be to add a length of pipe to one end of the ell or tee. This is for added stability, and if the pipe is long enough, it could be notched so that the phone can’t slide down in the portrait position. Only half of the pipe will be glued to the tee or ell fitting, so they may need a screw and nut to keep them from separating.
The monoculars that I have are 8 or 10 power, so the whole assembly needs to be supported on a tripod. To the end of the pipe I could add a flat plate that has a hole tapped for the standard 1/4 by 20 thread for tripod mount. One problem is that this only allows for portrait, not landscape position. But I think the monocular cuts the picture off so it’s square.
I have to get some materials and start making something, with pictures for this blog.
I could extend the pipe down to make a monopod and add a few adapters to bring the diameter down to 3/4 inch, to save weight.
Update 05-25 – I used a 1-1/4 inch plastic T fitting I had. I cut it with a hacksaw right on the line where the two halves of the mold joined. Each half consisted of one side of the T and half of the vertical section. The half fits against the back of the camera with the side of the T sticking out where the lens is. This hole was too big for the monocular eyepiece, so I put several wraps of black electrical tape around the eyepiece. The eyepiece then fit very snugly inside the hole. It held the monocular in position but the eyepiece was not close enough to the camera lens. So I tried to pull the eyepiece out of the hole to remove some tape, by when I pulled, the eyepiece separated from the monocular! It doesn’t look like I broke it, but I’m unable to get the two pieces to fit together. The eyepiece has a mechanism that moves it to focus for different eyes, and this is actuated by turning the eyepiece a quarter turn. These mechanism prevents the eyepiece from just screwing back onto the monocular. So I will have to use another monocular or buy a replacement.
