I think nowadays you have even more possibilities to play around then 20 years ago. You can use a Raspberry Pi for example and do some even more impressing things with just a few lines code of your own - building on a lot of open source software!
I have about four RasPis lying around doing doing things which where very much unaccessible for a hobbyist then. Just look at my current blog at http://µc.net to see a few (it's in german alas, maybe google translate can help here too..).
We disassembled a "door spy" (door peephole?) and used the lens - if memory serves me correct..
Keep in mind that the resolution was only 64x256 pixel (we used one of four physical separate 64x256 bit arrays on the chip) so the lens quality did not really matter.