Do It Yourself

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."

I was recently offered a free Pelican case, and she seemed too young to die. She was structurally sound, so I felt some plastic surgery would make her look 10 years younger... and it did.

Professional photographer Karl Taylor has put together a short-but-very-useful tutorial that will show you how you can calibrate your lens autofocus without buying a special calibration chart or tool. All you need are a few household items, your camera, and your tripod.

As we know, wide angle lenses show a larger field of view and therefore make things appear smaller and further away than they are. Which contradicts the concept of macro photography, where we want our subject to be projected onto the sensor at a magnification ratio of at least 1.0x. So how can we combine a wide angle perspective and macro macro-capabilities?

Apple has released the fourth installment in its "Experiments" series, showing off the iPhone 11 Pro's camera with a stunning series of shots on the theme of "Fire & Ice," and then taking us behind the scenes to reveal how each scene was captured.

If you ever visited some industrial surplus shops, very often you would see some cameras and lenses used in industrial automation. What you probably do not know is that these lenses can have very high optical performance and features we want: high resolving power, large image circle, low distortion, and often very long working distance compared to some of other lenses we use.

It’s called Bertha, and it will be the protagonist of the largest slide ever made. A gigantic camera born out of a desire to find out what photography can reveal when it's pushed beyond certain limits.

Self-described "maker" and YouTuber Sean Hodgins of Idle Hands Development recently took on a DIY project that's way beyond most of us mere mortals: he built his very own, working, 1-Kilopixel image sensor. Take that Sony!

My name is Ethan Moses, I make cameras at CAMERADACTYL. I 3D print film cameras and ship them all over the world. I want to share the newest camera I’ve made: the CAMERADACTYL Brancopan, a 35mm wide format camera that makes 20x 24x58mm frames in a 1:2.4 aspect ratio on standard 36 exposure 35mm film.

Did you know that you can make your own ground glass focusing screen? In his latest video, wet plate photographer Markus Hofstätter shows you exactly how by making a ground glass screen for one of his large format cameras.

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 my latest project, "we are the dead," I decided to build a room in which to shoot my pictures. I had absolutely no idea how to do this, but there were some facts I needed to consider.

What started off as a quick lighting test in my garage has turned into a full investigation and installation of my own DIY photography ceiling rail system. My shooting space measures 7x10 feet (2x3m) -- not a great space for shooting portraits.

Last year, I used a custom-built setup to shoot a timelapse of an eternal terrarium in my kitchen. Over the course of 10 months, a camera took two photos every hour of the day, while the plants inside the terrarium grew on their own without disturbance.

There are any number of ways to trigger a digital camera remotely: from IR remotes to smartphone apps. But if you're a bit more old fashioned, then Instructables user Steloherd has hacked together something you might like even better.

Photographer Nicholas Sherlock is back at it with his 3D printed creations. After creating a huge 5x macro setup using a 3D printed 300mm extension tube earlier this year, he decided to design and build a special 'rifle-style grip' that would allow him to more easily use that monstrous rig.

Want a tabletop wooden backdrop you can use for photographing everything from products to babies? Here's a 10.5-minute video by Erik Tande of DIY done wrong showing how you can make your own for basically zero cost.

Recently I made my own custom-built camera rig for shooting Through-The-Viewfinder videos on a Nikon Z6 through the viewfinder of an old Lomo Lubitel 166. With my setup, I can have the whole camera in the frame but without distracting hands visible. Here's how I did it.

Photographer Isaac Alvarez of Unplug Productions is at it again in a video that shows you how to capture striking, professional-grade "ink-watch" photography in your own living room using only the most basic equipment.

Light macro photographs can be tricky. If you are a beginning macro photographer and do not know where to start when it comes to using a speedlight to illuminate your subjects, here is a complete guide to different flash diffusers you can use for macro photos.

I have had this shot in my mind for years now. Seagulls, lots of seagulls, mobbing a camera. Wide-angle fisheye perspective. Reminiscent of Hitchcock.

If you develop your own film or wet plates, photographer Markus Hofstaetter has a great tip for you. With just a tiny little DIY tweak, you can turn a $5 all-in-one IKEA gadget into the perfect all-in-one Darkroom timer, thermometer and clock.

Photographer and creative tinkerer Alireza Rostami is back at it. After turning a broken computer into a working camera in August, he embarked on a new DIY project: making a working flash that you can wear like a wristwatch.

We've seen some unusual camera modding projects before, but this one is next level. Someone over in China took a $2,500 Sony a7R III, took it apart, and, through an insane amount of work, turned it into a $5,000 Leica Q2.

Want to set up a remote DSLR for shooting a time-lapse? The Intervalometerator (AKA 'intvlm8r') is an open-source intervalometer that can help you do so at minimal hardware cost (as long as you're comfortable tinkering with hardware and software).

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.

I've been involved with The Wild West Days in Viroqua, Wisconsin since 2008. I've been doing photography for most of that time as well, but as-of 2017, officially as Hickok Country Photography.

Camera-making enthusiast Lucus Landers has created the Mini View Camera, a creation he believes is the smallest view camera (and one of the smallest film cameras) ever made.

I wanted to see if it was possible to turn a dead SX-70 camera into a functioning digital camera without significantly modifying it’s outward appearance. I had no idea if this was reasonably doable but I set out to give it a try.

Edelkrone's Flextilt Head 2 is its best-selling tripod head. If you can't afford the $149 it costs to get one, the company has just unveiled the Flextilt Head 3D, a cheaper option you can 3D print and assemble yourself.

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.

I recently collaborated with Chris from filmismorefun and made a video about how to clean the beam splitter in your rangefinder camera as well as how to improve the rangefinder patch too. This is an advanced tutorial with great results.

I'm Niklas Roy, and I recently built a kilopixel camera called The Flying Pixel Portrait Camera. It's a do-it-yourself project that uses a single photoresistor and a video projector in order to capture portraits.

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.

Every year, a pine tree close to our house produces the most perfect cones, and I often pick up a handful of them on my way home. The cones are undeniably beautiful, but not of much practical use. Or so I thought, until one day it hit me that a cone would make a rather nifty SD card holder.

In this article, I'm going to show you how you can make a DIY darkroom safelight using very simple products from IKEA. Yes, IKEA the store that sells furniture that's almost made of cardboard.