Photographer Nick Cool came up with one of the strangest pieces of do-it-yourself camera gear that we’ve seen so far this year. He took an ordinary stainless steel sink filter — yup, the thing that catches food at the bottom of kitchen sinks — drilled various-sized holes through it, and stuck it into a filter ring after taking out the glass. The resulting photographic sink filter takes soft focus photos with pretty strange-looking bokeh in the background. Changing the size of the holes drilled into the plate produces different bokeh styles.

You can find the step-by-step tutorial on the build over on DIYPhotography. There are also some more sample photographs over in this Flickr set by Cool.

How To Build A Soft Focus Filter From A Sink Drainer [DIYPhotography]

Image credits: DIY soft focus filter and DIY soft focus filter by Nick Cool

Siebe Warmoeskerken of De Vetpan studios is a photographer and woodworker based in The Netherlands. This weekend, he decided to combine his two passions by building a custom wenge wood edition of the popular Polaroid SX-70 Alpha instant camera.
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After seeing the “woodenized” Canon F-1n that we featured earlier this month, Vancouver, Washington-based photographer Charlie Boucher decided that he wanted to give the mod a go. Unable to find any wood shoots locally, Boucher decided to go with a somewhat different (but slightly related) material: cork.
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Photographer Dominique Vankan wanted to play around with the old Autochrome Lumière process from the early 1900s, so he built himself a custom large format camera using LEGO pieces, cardboard, and duct tape.
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About a year ago, we shared a neat DIY method of transferring black-and-white photos onto blocks of wood. A very similar technique can be used for displaying your photos on glass. Inspired Ideas writes that all you need are a toner-based print of your photo (e.g. using a copier or laser printer) and some clear contact paper.

Sticking the contact paper to your print will transfer the toner from your ordinary paper to the sticky transparent film. The next step is to soak the two connected sheets in water, which softens up the white paper and allows it to be rubbed off. What you’re left with is a piece of wet transparent contact paper that features your photo. Let it dry to restore its stickiness, and then attach the resulting “sticker” to whatever you’d like to show off your photo on (e.g. glass jars, candle holders, windows etc.)

Making Memory Candles [Inspired Ideas via Photojojo]

Photographer Patrick Ng has an obsession with natural materials such as wood and leather. Recently, he decided to “woodenize” his beloved Canon F-1n SLR (a professional film SLR released back in 1976). He didn’t use a pre-made kit for the conversion, though… Instead, he simply ripped off the faux-leather and replaced it with faux-wood wallpaper.
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If you have an old plastic kit lenses lying around, something that you are not using for anything serious, you can give it a new life as a macro lens by removing the front element.
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Feast your eyes on this gorgeous twin-lens reflex camera that was designed and built from scratch by photographer Kevin Kadooka, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Portland. It uses a Mamiya-Sekor 105mm f/3.5 Chrome lens and has a Polaroid back for shooting 4.25×3.5-inch instant film, and is crafted out of laser-cut birch plywood.
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I’ve always been asked how I keep my equipment dry while shooting storms, and I figure with Hurricane Sandy on the way, now would be a good time to share! This is a very simple, inexpensive, easy-to-use, and effective solution to shooting in the rain! It costs less than 5 dollars, but I have never felt the need to purchase anything to replace it.
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Remember the remote Instagram printer called Instaprint? Although the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the product raised nearly a quarter of a million bucks from 800+ backers, it failed to reach its goal of $500K, and we haven’t heard much about the device since then. If you can’t wait to print Instagram photos remotely using a simple hashtag, James Croft over at MacTalk has a tutorial on how you can build your own:

Using a Mac, with a combination of web services & apps, we can breathe life back into [a cheap Bluetooth] printer, and turn it into a hashtag-based Instagram printer! In other words, any time there’s a new photo with a certain hashtag in Instagram, this will find it, download it, crop & resize it, then print it out. All completely automagically.

You’ll need a Bluetooth printer, accounts on IFTTT/Instagram/Dropbox, Hazel, and Photoshop (the last two are optional). While Croft’s tutorial is for Mac users, developer Lee Martin is working on a universal web app that’ll work across platforms.

Hacking Together an Automatic Instagram Printer [MacTalk]

Thanks for the tip, Phil!