When it comes to protecting our gear, we tend to go for the expensive because, as they say, “you get what you pay for.” But once in a while, a simple idea that helps you save a few bucks may not be such a bad thing.

We’ve shared a few DIY rain guards before — they usually involved some sort of clear plastic bag and tape — and even though those were simple enough in their own right, HDSLRNOW’s makeshift rain cover makes them all seem a bit complicated. Read more…

Have some slide film sitting around and no slide projector to show them off with? Diapod is a tiny product designed for you. It’s a simple and lightweight slide projector that uses a tabletop tripod, aluminum body, and LED light to project your slide film photos.
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Photographer Jared Krause made this simple camera strap for shooting on the streets of Toronto. The length of nylon rope he used cost just $2.50. Due to cold weather, Krause almost always wears the strap outside a jacket or sweatshirt, but if you’re shooting in warmer weather it might be wise to add some padding for comfort.

(via Photojojo)

Image credits: Photographs by Jared Krause and used with permission

The Girl With 7 Horses is a creative project by photographer Ulrika Kestere that shows a girl traveling to various landscapes in search of her “invisible horses”:

Once upon a time there was a girl who had 7 invisible horses. People thought she was crazy and that she in fact had 7 imaginative horses, but this was not the case. When autumn came the girl spent a whole day washing all her clothes. She hung them on a string in her garden to let the gentle autumn sun dry them. Out of nowhere, a terrible storm came and its fierce winds grabbed a hold of all her clothes and all seven horses (authors note: since they are invisible they obviously didn’t weigh much). The girl was devastated and spent all autumn looking for each horse spread around the country, wrapped in her clothes.

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Flickr user Twin-Reverb made this nifty DIY flash diffuser using a cardboard paper towel tube, a paper towel, and some aluminum foil.
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Developer Boris Smus came up with this super minimalist way of sharing his email address, Twitter username, and website URL. He writes,

I’m ordering a personal set of moo mini cards. These are small, two sided prints. One side contains an image, and the other contains contact information. On the image side, I’m putting snippets of travel photography. The other side is by default a conventional list of contact information, but moo conveniently allows it to be replaced by a custom image.

If you have an email address that lets you do the same thing, this could be a neat way to pass your contact info to prospective clients.

Minimal Business Card Design (via kottke.org)

We’ve seen all kinds of ideas for keeping track of your camera’s lens cap when it’s not being used, including velcro, special mounts, fashionable pouches, and even a retractable cap, but Nikon has come up with the best idea yet: a lens cap that attaches to camera straps! A patent filed by the company in 2009 and published yesterday shows a lens cap that can easily clip onto a strap when not in use — a simple solution to a small problem that apparently many entrepreneurs have been interested in solving. Sorry, but Nikon wins this one.

(via Egami)

Reddit user geft created a useful primer to get newbies started in digital photography. It’s a single image measuring 1045×5480 pixels that covers sensors, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and camera controls. This would be a great thing to print out, laminate, and give as a gift to someone who’s looking to learn.

Simple Guide to Photography (via Reddit)

Image credit: Graphic created by geft and used with permission

Tag clouds are a neat way of visualizing what content is about, and Tagerator is a simple program that generates them for your Flickr photo tags. Created by Jeremy Brooks (the guy behind SuperSetr), the simple Java app will run on any computer that has Java 1.6 installed. Besides its ability to generate the tag clouds for you, it stores the tag information gleaned from your account to disk, allowing you to use the tag/count information however you’d like.

Tagerator (via Thomas Hawk)

If you’d like to take nicer looking photographs of small objects, but don’t want to spend money buying a real light tent, you can always check out do-it-yourself options. There’s all sorts of DIY tutorials on the web, but this paper and binder clip tutorial by Nathan Moroney over at The Mostly Color Channel caught our eye. All you need are some pieces of paper and 4 binder clips.

This light tent can also be scaled up and down. How else to take photos of your new light tent but inside of a larger light tent? Cheap railboard is great for larger versions. [...] Given the wide availability of paper and paper clips it’s also quite handy to be able to construct a light tent as needed, especially when traveling, in a co-worker’s cube or on the beach. It takes me about a minute to make one from scratch. The binder clips can be removed for lay-flat storage of the light tent. The resulting images [...] are sufficient for many uses, even blogging.

Ready to get started? You can check out the step-by-step tutorial here:

Cheap, Green & Diffuse: A Paper & Binder Clip Light Tent