After almost two years of shooting film nonstop and more than $1,000 worth of expenses on processing and prints, I needed to reconsider my budget and find a way of being able to shoot more and pay less. I thus began to process my C-41 rolls at home. It’s extremely easy to do and I‘ll show you today how to do it, step by step.
Read more…
Do you have old large format film holders lying around that you no longer have any use for? You can breathe new life into them by transforming them into nifty picture frames.
Read more…
If you find yourself regularly shooting in the rain and in need of a better way to keep yourself and your gear dry, check out the tripod-mounted umbrella holder seen in the photo above. It keeps an umbrella fixed directly above you and your camera, allowing you give your full attention to photo-making. A quick trip to the hardware store will get you the ingredients you’ll need: a few brackets, a pipe to serve as the holder, and some nuts and bolts. Most of the components come together quite easily, but you’ll need some way to cut sections off your pipe.
Attaching an umbrella to your tripod can introduce some undesirable movement if there’s a lot of wind, but weighing down the tripod and keeping your hands on your camera can help keep it stable. To get started, head on over to Digital Camera World for the step-by-step tutorial.
Stay Dry with a Hands-free Umbrella Holder for Your Tripod [Digital Camera World via Reddit]
Photographer Kirsty Wiseman didn’t want to shell out money for a real beauty dish — she doesn’t really need one — so she built this funny-looking DIY beauty dish for a few pennies using a couple of Styrofoam bowls, a couple of cocktail sticks, and a piece of aluminum foil. After playing around with it, Wiseman was delightfully surprised to find that her gear hack actually produced decent results.
Read more…
If you’re a fan of Instagram, then you’ll probably appreciate this neat DIY project by Elsie and Emma of A Beautiful Mess. Their Homemade Photo Filter DIY involves drawing colorful patterns on squares cut from transparency sheets:
To use your filter, simply hold it over your lens when shooting. (with auto focus enabled) Move the filter around over your lens as you frame your shot. You’ll be able to choose which part of your photo is in focus and which part is blurry and colorful!
You can achieve different looks based on things like color, pattern, and how you hold the sheet. The resulting effect makes it look like you spent some time tweaking the toning and contrast sliders in post. Head on over to their blog for the full lowdown and more sample photos.
Homemade Photo Filter DIY [A Beautiful Mess via MAKE]
Image credits: Photographs by Elsie and Emma of A Beautiful Mess
Sending a camera up to the edges of space on a weather balloon has been done quite a bit now, but perhaps none of the projects have been as creative as Ron Fugelseth’s effort. Ron worked with his 4-year-old son to give his son’s favorite toy train Stanley a fun and exciting ride to space. They built a rig consisting of a weather balloon, a styrofoam box, an HD video camera, and an old cell phone for GPS. Stanley was then attached to the outside of the box using a rod, positioned so that the camera would be perpetually pointed at Stanley with the world in the background.
Read more…
California-based designer Joy Kelley of How Joyful upgraded her camera recently and needed a new bag to carry it around in. Instead of buying or making a single camera bag, she decided to make a flexible padded insert that can be moved around from bag to bag. After creating a very nice looking insert and testing it out for a few months, she writes,
I have to say that I completely love my camera carrier, and changing purses is super easy! My carrier fits in all my purses, in some more tight than others, so when I need to carry more than just my camera I simply choose a bigger handbag, works beautifully!
What’s awesome is that her solution features moveable dividers just like the camera inserts you can go out and buy, which let you adjust the insert based on the gear you’d like to carry. If you want to try your hand at making your own, Kelley has written up a detailed step-by-step tutorial. The ingredients you’ll need are: some felt or fleece, canvas or fabric to protect the outside of the carrier, foam for the padding, a long piece of velcro, and standard sewing gear.
Camera carrier insert tutorial [How Joyful via Lifehacker]
If you want a way to display and rotate through your latest prints and instant photos, you can try making yourself a photo ledge. It’s a simple photo holder created using a long piece of plastic u channel molding, available at your local hardware store. Find a way to attach it to a wall — perhaps using velcro, tape, pins, or adhesive — and you’ll have yourself a convenient little ledge that you can use to show off your images. The photos simply rest inside the gap in the plastic ledge, so you can quickly swap prints in and out when you grow tired of certain images. Head on over to Photojojo for the step-by-step tutorial.
Make a DIY Photo Ledge [Photojojo]
Update: IKEA also sells dedicated photo ledges for £8.25 each. Its ledges are designed for heavier picture frames. (thx Sam!)
Earlier this week, we shared a funky piece of camera equipment called the Bounce-Wall, which features a large card that serves as a surface to bounce your flash off when you’re out and about. While the pricing wasn’t available at the time, David Hobby of Strobist has since revealed that it’ll carry a $99 when it’s released later this month.
If you don’t have any free benjamins to drop on this product — or don’t want to wait — the fine folks over at Lighting-Academy have created a ghetto do-it-yourself version you can build and use. All you’ll need is an old wire clothes hanger, a piece of cardboard, some aluminum foil, a clothespin, and a tripod screw. The tutorial is in German, so you might need to use an online translater or base your build off the pictures alone.
DIY Wall Bounce for 99 cents [Lighting-Academy via Strobist]
The bean bag is a tool that photographers sometimes use to stabilize their camera. Plop it down on a fixed platform, and the bag can do wonders for achieving sharper shots. Instead of buying a bean bag for a marked up price, you can easily create a do-it-yourself version at home. After all, it’s just some beans in a bag… Digital Camera World has a step-by-step tutorial on how you can create one using some lentils and a pair of unwanted jeans.
What’s great about using a pair of jeans, beside the fact that denim is a very durable material, is that you can cut out the crotch section — a bit strange, we know — in order to give your bean bag a built-in zipper. This makes filling the bag a breeze, and allows you to quickly change the number of beans inside to make the bag softer or firmer.
Reduce camera shake with a bag of lentils [Digital Camera World]
