London-based photographer Kelly Angood has had quite a tumultuous year so far in 2013. Last month she announced that she would be turning her popular cardboard medium format camera design into a proper do-it-yourself kit. After launching a Kickstarter campaign to take preorders, she quickly raised over £23,000 (~$34,000) from over 600 supporters.

However, the fact that her camera was based on Hasselblad’s famous design turned out to be a dealbreaker. After being informed that she was putting herself at risk of a lawsuit, Angood decided to cancel the project and turn her back on the money. Now, one month later, she’s at it again with a different (original) camera design and a new camera kit Kickstarter campaign.
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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…

Here’s something that may not be relevant to most of you, but if you enjoy dabbling in do-it-yourself gear hacks you might find it interesting. Milan-based photographer and freelance engineer Andrea Biffi came up with an interesting way of creating a shutter release cable connector for his Canon DSLR. Instead of buying an actual remote and slicing off the plug end, he decided to cast his own out of hard rubber.
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My name is David Lo, and I am a street photographer who enjoys taking vintage cameras, digitizing them, and then using them for street photography. This is a walkthrough on my process of modifying a camera.
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Here’s a tutorial on how to capture an exploding water balloon in the precise moment the balloon pops, while the water still holds the shape of a balloon. I didn’t want to invest any money in laser barriers or something similar, so I built a very simple mechanism. It doesn’t give me perfect timing, but it produces acceptable results.
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This camera is a poor man’s large format camera. It is made with a simple shoebox acting as a dark room.
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Photographer Váncsa Domokos created a neat do-it-yourself camera accessory that uses optical fibers to control the direction and intensity of a flash unit’s light. Instead of having light come directly out of the flash unit, the accessory redirects it through a thick bundle of optical fibers, allowing you to point the light in any direction — and in different directions if you’d like.
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In the past, we’ve shared how you can create a cheap and simple rain cover for your camera and lens using a Ziploc bag. While that solution is effective in protecting your gear, it might make it a bit difficult to adjust your lens and operate the rings.

If you’d like a little more access to your lens, you can also create a rain guard using the plastic cylindrical cover that comes with writable optical discs.
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Newer Leica lenses have a special lens code on the mount flange of each lens that informs the camera of what’s mounted on it, and allows lens-related EXIF data to be embedded inside photographs. If you have an older Leica lens or a third-party lens on your hands, you might not have this special code, but did you know that you can apply the code manually to a code-less lens using black and white paint?

La Vida Leica! has published a tutorial showing how simple the process is: it only takes around $15 and 15 minutes to do.
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Here’s another creative way to put those thousands of archived Instagram shots to some practical use, courtesy of the folks over at Photojojo. A fun DIY project, this step-by-step will show you how to turn the window of your choice into a stained glass-inspired photography display. Read more…