cheap

How to Turn House Lights Into Cheap DIY Light Modifiers

There is an almost endless supply of lighting modifiers available on the market right now, some are cheap and some of the better ones are certainly a lot more expensive. But does cost directly relate to quality? Well, a lot of the time yes it does if you're referring to build quality.

Buying a Used DSLR Kit for $80: Here’s What You Get for the Money

Cameras and lenses are expensive. Really expensive. Even the cheapest entry-level DSLR kit today costs $500 or more. But what if you buy the cheapest possible used DSLR? A camera that's over 10 years old? How would it stack up against today's modern cameras? I was curious about this, so I decided to find out for myself.

I Had My Broken Sony Camera Fixed on the Cheap in Thailand

Travelers like to visit Thailand for cheap foods, medical procedures, and... other less wholesome reasons. One thing people often overlook, however, is the repair services. In Thailand, you can almost always repair any gadget for a very reasonable price. This especially applies to Sony cameras that are made in Thailand. In this post, I’ll explain the process so that you can repair your gadgets and bring them back to life.

High Magnification at a Low Price: How I Built a Super Macro Rig for $230

Last year, I bought a macro lens for the summer. Just a normal one with 1x magnification. I fell into a beautiful and mesmerizing world of minuscule flowers and bugs. I found that in macro photography, you don't have to travel to beautiful places to take beautiful photos -- you can just walk around in your backyard, and discover a whole new world.

How to Make a DIY Beauty Dish for Less Than $7

Beauty dishes are great pieces of equipment to have in your lighting arsenal, but they come at a price. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a dish, yet using a cheap shoot-through umbrella can easily produce the same effect, as this 10-minute tutorial by Joe Edelman shows.

How to Create a DIY Car Camera Rig on the Cheap

Action shots of cars in movement are often taken with a ‘car rig’ – basically a long pole that is attached to the car, with a camera mounted on the end. A professional car rig can cost in the thousands, but this 13 minute video from Practical Photography will teach you to make your own for under $40.

How to Build a Dirt Cheap DIY Ring Light

Ring lights are a great piece of kit for illuminating your subject evenly and creating a distinctive catch light in the eyes. Unfortunately, these lights are typically expensive, but this short tutorial by Instructables user gravityisweak will show you how to building your own for next to nothing.

Hands On With the New Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 G2

If you’ve read any photography website or stopped into a store recently, you probably know that the creative options available to photographers are as numerous as ever. One aspect of photographic gear that has seen the most rapid expansion in quality options as of late, is lens selection.

Turn a Cheap Vintage Lens into a DIY Selective Focus Lens for $10

Lensbaby's creative selective focus lenses like the Composer Pro will run you around $400; even the relatively affordable Spark costs $90. If all of that sounds too expensive for your taste, you should definitely check out this hacked version Mathieu Stern created for just 30 bucks!

2 Affordable Films for Photographers on a Budget

It's time to give some long-overdue love to two cheap films in price, but by no means in quality. It can be tempting to go for the expensive films when you're out buying rolls of 35mm, but let's not forget about the bottom of the shelf.

How to Make a DIY Home Photography Studio on a Budget

Need a home studio for some product photography? COOPH has some great ideas for you. In this inspirational little video, the magazine shows you how to build a DIY photography studio at home using mostly household items.

Lens Shootout: Nikon 105mm f/1.4 ED vs Laowa 105mm f/2 STF

The world's fastest 105mm lens, the $2,200 Nikon 105mm f/1.4, made a big splash when it arrived on the scene, but is there a more affordable 105mm lens that can produce similar results? Laowa's $700 105mm f/2 STF lens gives it a shot in this lens shootout.

This Early 80s Wide-Angle Zoom is a True Gem… and Dirt Cheap, Too

The winter sun was low to the horizon as I steadied myself upon a rather uncomfortable wooden perch. My back to the sun and downwind, target in clear sight, I drew in a deep breath then slowly exhaled as I prepared to take the shot.

$2,000 vs $50: How to Build Your Own DSLR Dome Port Underwater Housing

If you've done research into underwater housing, you'll know how expensive they can be. In some instances, they cost more than the camera. Certainly, when you pay the premium price you're also purchasing assurance, functionality, size, etc. However, rebel that I am, I didn't want to pay the premium, so I built my own.

Extension Tubes Open Up a Whole New World of Photography

With travel photography, one of the issues is prioritizing equipment. You simply can’t carry everything you could possibly want to bring; if you do, it often hampers the overall travel experience as you’re weighed down by equipment and have to constantly look after it.

How to Shoot Pro Portraits in Everyday Places

My name is Nick Fancher and I'm a portrait and commercial photographer who specializes in lighting, specifically with the use of small flash in unconventional locations.

Yard Sale Find: $10 for an Amazing Portrait Lens

I recently returned home from my trip to Egypt, and with my wife due any day now, I had some time to squander on lens hunting. A local craigslist post revealed that one of the camera shops in town was having a yard sale to clear out all of their old stuff in preparation for moving to a new location. I wasn’t about to pass up on a camera shop yard sale!

Swirly Bokeh for Cheap: Shooting with a $40 Vintage Soviet Lens

Photographer Manuel Ortiz went out and did something many of us have been considering a lot lately: he bought himself a cheap, vintage Soviet lens. And now, we get to join him to see how this awesome old portrait lens performs when it's attached to the very modern Sony A7R II.

How I Made a DIY Universal Tripod L-Bracket for Under $5

So what is a "Universal Tripod L-Bracket"? Well, I'm not sure, because I couldn't find another on the market quite like it. Some tripod manufacturers make L-brackets specific to their own tripod, but I found nothing universal.

How to Fix a Damaged Tripod Thread at Home on the Cheap

If the tripod thread on the bottom of your camera or favorite accessory breaks, don't go throwing the whole thing away or sending it off for an expensive repair. All you need is about $25 and some DIY know-how to fix it yourself.

The Yi M1 is an Ultra Cheap Mirrorless Camera with Leica Looks

If you want a camera that looks like a Leica T but will cost you less than a third the price, Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaoyi has something for you. It's called the M1, and it's a Micro Four Thirds mirrorless ILC that won't come close to hurting your bank account.