The team over at COOPH today shared an insightful video that describes 7 DIY photography tips that use nothing more than items you have lying around the house. From can koozies to tights, a number of unusual household products make a cameo and help you add a unique, homemade element to your photo game.
If you’re looking to get more out of your smartphone’s camera with minimal financial investment, look no further. Kai and the DRTV team have created a short little video that goes over ten cheap, clever tricks that'll help you get the most of your mobile photography.
Kai specifically uses an iPhone throughout the video, but a number of these tricks can be used on any mobile device.
Created by photography magazine COOPH, this handy little video follows photographer …
Snapchat, famous for dealing with the problem of rising attention spans by whittling the life of a photo down to 10 seconds, has gotten a little more time-friendly with an update that includes a limited option for re-viewing images later.
In October 2012, astrophotographer Raymond Collecutt of Whangarei, New Zealand shared a new (and risky) idea he was playing around with: converting a standard DSLR into a sharper monochrome camera for photographing space.
Focus stacking is when you combine multiple photographs of different focus distances in order to obtain a single photo with a much greater depth of field than any of the individual shots. This can be done by turning the zoom ring on your lens, but this can be difficult to control (especially for highly magnified photos). It can also be done using special rigs designed for the purpose, but those are generally quite pricey.
Photographer and software engineer David Hunt recently came up with the brilliant idea of turning an old flatbed scanner into a macro rail for shooting focus-stacking photos.
Last month, nearly three hundred programmers descended on Dropbox's headquarters in San Francisco for the third annual Photo Hack Day. In the span of 24 hours, they threw together 70 new apps using the APIs of different photo services. $10,000 in prize money was distributed to the top three apps. Here's a look at the three best hacks that popped out of the competition.
Snapping a photograph while driving isn't the smartest, safest, or easiest thing to do. How then should one go about snapping pictures of the interesting things you drive past without breaking the law or putting people at risk?
Caleb Kraft of Hack a Day has one possible solution: remote-controlled cameras that attach to the side windows of a car.
Photo enthusiast Chris Malcolm needed a better way to aim his 500mm lens at fast moving subjects (e.g. birds in flight), so he upgraded his lens with a DIY sighting aid by attaching a non-magnified red dot sight:
They're designed to clamp onto a gun sight wedge mount, so some kind of adapter is required. I played with the hot shoe mount, but it was too flexible -- the sight needed re-zeroing at every mount, and was easily knocked out of calibration. The degree of precision required to aim the central focus sensor at the target via the dot also made parallax error a problem on the hot shoe. So I decided to mount it directly on the lens. Least parallax error, plus the geometry of the lens barrel and the sight mount naturally lines it up with the lens. To protect the lens barrel I glued the sight clamp to a cardboard tube slightly too small, slit open to provide a sprung grab on the lens body. The slit also handily accommodates the focus hold button on the lens barrel.
Malcolm reports that the site "works amazingly well", making it "trivially easy to aim the lens at anything very quickly".
Heavier tripods are generally more stable than lighter ones — wind doesn’t affect them as much — but hauling …
Reading a camera’s user manual is a great way to become familiar with all of its features and functions, …
Have a habit of losing your lens caps? Add a clip to them to keep them attached to your …
Having trouble framing shots when “shooting from the hip” and not looking through (or at) your camera? …
Wondering whether or not the shutter speeds on your camera are accurate? Instead of taking it to …
If you have a potato chip tube lying around, you can convert the tube into a super simple DIY snoot. All you need to do is cut an opening in the closed end that's the size of your flash head (tip: use some duct tape to prevent it from scratching your flash).
In this short video, photographer Allen Mowery shows how you can create a …
Here’s a quick tip for if you ever have a hard time removing a lens filter from …
Photographer Peter Wirén came up with a super cheap and easy way to record sliding shots using his DSLR. Instead of buying an expensive slider or dolly system, he simply cut the fingers off an old glove and used them as "socks" on his GorillaPod.
If you have some translucent film canisters lying around, you can turn them into DIY glow sticks for …
The Image Fulgurator is a brilliant device created -- and patented -- by Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck. It's an optically triggered slave flash that fires through the back of a camera, projecting a message or image on the film through the lens -- basically, it's an optically triggered projector. What this allows von Bismarck to do is prank unsuspecting photographers by adding random pictures or words into their photographs whenever they use their camera's flash.
Lens hoods can become loose over time, leading to annoying rattling sounds or problematic vignetting if the …
If you ever find yourself needing some quick stabilization when recording video with your DSLR, but don’t have a …
For their music video for the song “Bright Siren“, Japanese band …
We shared a couple weeks ago that it's possible to scan film using an ordinary flatbed scanner and a DIY cardboard adapter, but did you know you can also use a large-screen cell phone or tablet computer to provide the necessary backlighting? All you need is a way to turn a large portion of the screen entirely white (e.g. a "flashlight" app). Simply place the device facedown over the film on the scanner, and scan it with the cover open.
Check out this mummified camera used by Reuters photographer Jo Yong-Hak. Yong-Hak was assigned to cover the popular Boryeong Mud Festival this year in South Korea, and decided to protect his gear with some good ol' fashioned plastic wrap.
If you've tried to scan film using an ordinary flatbed scanner as you would a piece of paper, you've probably discovered that it didn't turn out very well. The reason is because film needs to be illuminated from behind, while conventional scanners capture light that's reflected off what they're scanning. Before you give up hope and shell out money for a film scanner, here's some good news: you can build a cheap and simple cardboard adapter that turns any scanner into a film scanner!
Photographer Adrian Onsen wanted to use the AI Servo autofocus mode on his …
Reflector mounts (the things that attach a reflector to your bike) are so cheap that bike shops often give …
Do you have an efficient way of keeping track of which batteries or memory cards are fresh and ready …
Here's another quick tutorial by Destin, the guy who helped popularize using chickens as a cheap Steadicam alternative. It was made on an airplane flight when he wanted to shoot some photographs of the ice forming outside his window. If you're ever in a situation where you want to shoot a macro photo but don't have a macro lens, try flipping your lens around for a cheap and easy macro photography solution.
If you have an old or broken flatbed scanner lying around and gathering dust, a neat thing you can …
Andrew Lathrop came up with this novel way of building a simple radiation detector using an old compact camera, …
If Doctor Octopus were to design a DIY flash accessory, it might look …
Cinematographer James Miller spent two years developing a technique for converting 8mm footage to digital by beaming it directly onto the sensor of a Canon 5D Mark II. He replaced the bulb on an old projector with LED lights, and used elements from a disassembled lens to focus the light. You can read a step-by-step walkthrough of this project here.
Rather than using more expensive bags or cases for moving around your lighting gear, you can buy a bass …
Having a camera with you may get you better customer service at places like restaurants, retail stores, and hotels.
Last year we posted a tip on how you can use jar openers to remove stuck lens filters, but have you ever thought of using them as a cheap follow focus? Tony Carretti was shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond when he came across a twist jar opener in the kitchen aisle that he realized could be used on his camera.
Photographer John B. Crane was ice climbing in Colorado when he came upon a little ice cave full of "tiny wonders". Wishing he had a green gel, he suddenly had the brilliant idea of using some Fruit Roll-Ups he had brought along for that purpose.
How do photographers get those wide images that bleed through the edges of the negative, showing the sprocket holes? It's a technique that allows your to create stunning panoramic images -- these little bits of film become art in themselves. These photographs are achieved by loading 35mm film into a 120 medium format camera. This tutorial was written with the Holga in mind, but the same technique works for other 120 cameras as well.
I had some stuff lying around as well as saw some parts as I was out and thought this would be fun to make. I have around $20 invested in parts. On eBay I saw ring lights for anywhere around $40 on up, so this will save you money and it was fun to make.