Consumer affairs blog The Consumerist caused a stir earlier this week by offering the following advice to people looking to earn some extra cash for the holidays:

Become a photographer. Most photographers will tell you that persistence is at least as important as skill in creating great work. If you know people who are looking to take portraits or holding a social function, offer to shoot it for free and sell them the pictures if they like them.

Needless to say, the suggestion caused quite an angry response from actual photographers, who equated the tip with telling people to buying a hammer in order to become an independent contractor. Stan Horaczek over at PopPhoto has also written up a lengthy response. It looks like people are taking Missy’s advice quite seriously.

Ideas On Scraping Up Extra Cash For The Holidays (via PopPhoto)

Image credit: Day 270/365 – Too Many Cameras by Great Beyond

Sometimes pricing your services creatively can be a good marketing tactic. Other times, as in the case of this photographer, it can be quite the opposite.

(via Reddit)

Leica offers a funky $200 lens holder accessory for its M system film rangefinders that screws into the tripod mount and lets you store an extra lens on the bottom of the camera. Here’s the description found on the site:

[...] the second lens also serves as a handle when it’s inserted into its bayonet mount, helping to provide additional stability when shooting handheld at long exposure times. The setup could even be used as a miniature tripod.

Makes sense. As we all know, the first thing a Leica shooter thinks when they drop big bucks on a new lens is, “Hmm. I’ll bet this lens would also work well as a mini-tripod!”.

Leica Lens Holder M (via Gizmodo)

You know how you can never manage to frame people properly when taking self-portraits of you and your friends? What? You’ve been getting along just fine? Well, if you do suddenly find yourself with self-portrait ineptitude and randomly feel like spending some dough, you can buy a “Mirror, Mirror on the Camera“, a “cool self-adhesive self-portrait mirror you stick on your camera or cell phone” meant for helping you frame self-portraits better.

The graphic above describes the product well. It turns your camera into a cheapo Samsung TL210 and helps you stop chopping the heads of your subjects. You can pick one up for $8 over at Brightscreen, or save some money and go with a DIY version.

Mirror, Mirror (via Steve’s Digicams)