Here’s a neat idea for those of you who know the benefit of using sandbags to keep your light stands from tipping over, but aren’t sure if that benefit is worth the 13-30 dollars heavy-duty light stand sandbags will run you on Amazon. It’s a DIY solution, and it comes to us courtesy of Tylordfilms. Read more…

You may have seen built-it-yourself 35mm pinhole cameras before, but have you ever seen a DIY SLR? Lomography today announced the Konstruktor, a camera it calls “the world’s first 35mm do-it-yourself” SLR camera. If you loved building model airplanes as a kid, this is one camera kit you’re going to love.
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Phoenix-based photographer Dan Tabár sometimes shoots on sound stages, sets, and quiet studios — locations where a loud camera would either cause problems or cause angry glares and murderous thoughts. Needing a way to surpress the shutter sound of his Nikon D800 — he says the “quiet mode is a joke” — Tabár decided to create his own DIY sound blimp.
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Here’s an awesome DIY project put together by photographer and student Cormac Relf. In a recent fit of DIY-ness Relf decided to create his own homebrew lens. As far as materials, he used only a glass reading puck — the kind your grandparents might use to see their reading material better — and some cardboard. Read more…

Want to shoot insanely cool Matrix-style “bullet time” footage at home? You can do so with a single rig built out of relatively cheap components.

NASA spaceship engineer Mark Rober came up with a brilliant way to shoot eye-popping imagery using just a GoPro camera and a cheap ceiling fan.
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Dublin, Ireland-based photographer Maciej Pietuszynski was doing a bit of spring cleaning recently when he decided to upgrade a plastic box he has been using to carry his camera and flash unit. His idea was to give the box an extra job as a makeshift softbox in addition to its storage/transportation/protection duties.
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Originally produced for the US military in WW2, the Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm f/2.5 is a large-format monster of a lens. Mounted in bombers, facing down at Europe, this lens was sold to the US government for the price of a family car. It found its way into military surplus after the war, and was widely used in journalism and by professional photographers.
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Wireless connectivity is one of the hot features in the camera world these days, and many (if not most) new cameras either have built-in wireless connectivity or an optional wireless adapter that provides the feature. Unfortunately, the wireless adapters are often quite pricey, especially for higher-end cameras.

Here’s something neat that you might be interested in knowing if you shoot with a Canon 1D X: you can connect a cheap WiFi adapter designed for homes and offices to give your camera wireless tethering!
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More and more photographers are attempting to build their own DIY lightboxes these days as they look for ways to easily digitize their film at home using a digital camera. However, a common problem that plagues these lightboxes is vignetting — lighting is uneven and shadows form gradients near the edges of the surface.

Photographer Rafał Nitychoruk of Gdynia, Poland tells us that he has solved the problem with his own custom lightbox. The trick? Make your lightbox short, and stack multiple layers of glass.
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Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how you can make a pretty nice flash diffuser for your macro setup for just a little time and a little money.
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