homemade

Waiting while flatbed scanners scan a color negative film is nothing to be excited about. This process and the subsequent color precorrection can take anywhere from an hour to two.

I wanted a device that can throw light patterns onto a wall or a model. There are some commercially available but they are quite expensive and I this was only for occasional use. I thought that this is something that can be 3D printed.

New Zealand-based commercial photographer Chris Cameron wanted an ultra-portable solution for supporting lights in cramped indoor spaces, so he created a simple 2-legged leaning light stand.

My name is Antoine Loncle, and I'm an independent photographer. I shared my homemade 8x10 box camera on several photography groups and it received a lot of interest. I figured I'd do a little write up for anyone that wanted to know more about the camera as well as see some images of the building process.

You might have heard of the Pixelstick. “Nothing compares” is one of their tag lines. And this is true... at least price-wise. I have always wanted one to at least try out some light painting with it, but the Pixelstick retails for €400 here in Germany and $349 in the United States.

For his latest project, Iranian photographer and camera maker Alireza Rostami collected 35mm film canisters and used them to construct the bodies of medium format and large format cameras. The project is called "Unity Camera."

Daniel Riley of the popular YouTube channel rctestflight has been building tiny autonomous boats, and recently he realized that the platform would be perfect for shooting photos for hyperlapse videos. In this 14-minute video, he explains how he made and tuned a boat for automated hyperlapses.

After getting his hands on two broken Lubitel twin-lens reflex cameras, Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami found that the shutter mechanisms still worked, so he decided to turn parts from the two cameras into a homemade dual-lens wrist camera for 3D stereoscopic photography.

For those of us born in the 1970s and 80s, this new phenomenon of mottled, cloudy backdrops appearing in modern portraits is an odd one. You see, back when we were kids, we had horrendously cheesy family and school portraits taken in front of these bizarrely arranged patterns, so to us, it’s pretty weird to see these painted, cloudy backdrops now grace the covers of Vogue and Tatler.

Brendan Barry is a UK-based large format photographer who has a curious passion for creating working cameras out of the most random everyday objects you could think of. ILFORD featured his work earlier this year, and here's a look at some of his cameras and the photos they shoot.

PrismLensFX unveiled a set of Variable Prism Filters back in March that lets photographers achieve prism effects using specially-designed lens filters. Upon seeing the prism filters, landscape photographer Christian Mögnum Möhrle decided to try his hand at making his own do-it-yourself version.

Self-taught programmer Martin Fitzpatrick of Two Bit Arcade has created the world's first Etch A Sketch digital camera. It captures digital photos and then outputs them by drawing them onto the Pocket Etch A Sketch "screen" found on the back.

ILFORD PHOTO just released this 15-minute short film that looks at the work of Brendan Barry, a large format photographer, lecturer, and camera builder who does unusual work with cameras and photography. It's titled, "The Camera Maker."

For Easter, I made a pinhole camera out of a chocolate Easter egg. In this 5-minute video and article, I'll show you how it's done.

I got my first 3D printer recently, but it sits in a dark corner of my room, so I thought I'd design a light for it. Then I realized I could kill two birds with one stone and design it to be useful for photography as well.

What do you get when you combine a pixelstick with a drone? Makers Ivan Miranda and Tom Stanton recently decided to show all of us by creating a custom light stick drone that can be used to shoot light-painting photos in the sky.

Back in July 2018, photographer Oscar Oweson started an effort to build a homemade rangefinder camera -- a 6x7 camera designed to be like an all-mechanical version of the Mamiya 7. Months later, the Panomicron Holmium was born.

Light diffusion panels can cost $80 to $100 or more when purchased retailed, but very little when you make them yourself, and to do so is very simple. I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked about my diffusion panels and where I get them from. The ones I use in my studio have all been custom-made to fit my needs, and I’ll show you just how to make your own.

Amateur photographer Guy Sie of The Netherlands needed a better way of remembering what film speed he has loaded into his camera, so he created custom 3D-printed camera hot shoe covers with ISO numbers on them.

When low-quality photos or videos are posted online, people often say that they were shot with a "potato camera." But if you actually want to shoot photos with a literal potato camera, how would you go about doing so?

Thinking of putting together a professional photo portfolio as a high-impact way of sharing your work with potential clients? Check out this informative and inspiring 5-minute video by photographer Caleb Kerr, who recently built a portfolio of his own and put together a helpful walkthrough for anyone interested in doing the same.

Photographer Mathieu Stern loves experimenting with very old and/or strange camera lenses, but his latest project is quite strange, even by his standards. He used a 3D printer and created a lens that looks like a giant eyeball.

Polaroid cameras are fun to use, but shooting high numbers of instant photos can get very expensive very quickly. Tim Alex Jacobs, known as mitxela online, recently solved this problem by modifying a standard Polaroid camera into an instant camera that prints photos on thermal paper (the kind used for receipts).

I really enjoyed reading the Photography: The Definitive Visual History and it got me thinking about blending older forms of photography with newer digital equipment. I became obsessed with TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) cameras -- not for their ability to view through one lens while capturing an image through the other, but for the style of photography that this type of camera forces the photographer to adopt.

I recently got bored and decided to expand a super-budget project I'm working on. I love gridded beauty dishes for dramatic artsy stuff, beauty, and as a generally very versatile modifier. However, even a cheap one is out of budget for this project. So... I made one.

I love DIY props and big scenes in photography that are well designed. Not many of us photographers have the place or money to create our own stages so I wanted to challenge myself to make one in our living room with a very low budget.

Albertino of Instax Magic created a unique camera that blends the old and the new. Half of it is made of LEGO, and half is a 90-year-old Zeiss-Ikon Trona folding plate camera.

Instagif is a new camera that's what you would get if you crossed a Polaroid instant camera with those moving pictures from the Harry Potter universe. The brainchild of Abhishek Singh, the camera captures a GIF and instantly "prints" it out on a little cartridge.

The folks at Fotodiox found one of the weirdest, most threatening lenses you'll ever see at an antique store recently. Totally homemade—the thing doesn't even include an aperture—this rifle stock lens is one we do NOT suggest you travel with... unless you really want to freak out the TSA.

A young kid named Isaiah Xavier is blowing up the Internet with a homemade music video he created using just his phone and a lip syncing app named Musical.ly. Without exaggerating, we can say this video is one of the most impressive smartphone creations we've ever seen.

I recently found myself with a spine injury, which proved to kinda be a big road block to my photography. My photo projects usually involved lots of driving and walking, two things that proved to be extremely painful due to my crappy health. One day, sitting around bored, I decided to create a camera that was as immobile as I was. Armed with a rough sketch, and a misguided sense of self-confidence, I built a 20x24 camera over a weekend.