I’ve used poly-boards, bounce-boards, and even white sheets and white walls as lighting modifiers to soften the light in the past, but arguably the quickest and most efficient way to instantly achieve beautifully soft light, is the V-Flat.
Dora Goodman—maker of gorgeous hand-crafted custom cameras like these—is back with another 3D-printed, open-source camera that you can make at home. It's called the SCURA, and it's a curved pinhole camera that shoots 60x25mm panoramic images on regular 35mm film.
The Standard 4x5 is a new 3D printed large format camera that's perfect for aspiring large format photographers on a budget: the camera comes as an IKEA-style assemble-it-yourself kit that costs just $320.
London-based DIY computing company Kano has created a new kit for people who would like to assemble and program their own digital camera. It's called the Kano Camera Kit.
Building your own touchscreen, WiFi-enabled digital camera might seem like the most expensive of photo-related DIY projects, but it doesn't have to be. In fact, Adafruit can show you how to put one together for less than $150!
Build-it-yourself cameras can be both fun and educational. For photography types, a camera like the Konstructor or the Last camera makes for a fun weekend project that you can then take out on occasion when your inner hipster is calling, or give as a gift to a budding photo enthusiast.
Similarly, there's a large community of people who love pinhole cameras, which they've made using everything from LEGOs to dumpsters. So what happens when those two worlds collide? You get the Original Pin.
If you're shopping for a young person who'd benefit from learning a little more about the principles of photography, you may want to consider the LAST Camera: a build-it-yourself 35mm film camera that could well outfreak Lomography for quirky build and artfully distressed images.
We've featured build-it-yourself cameras before, but those DIY products aren't often suitable for children. One in particular was made entirely from 3D-printed parts, a DIY SLR for crafty adults that would be both fun and educational to make.
The Bigshot DIY digital camera kit was created with a similar goal in mind, only creator Shree Nayar came up with the idea specifically for children.
Are you the type of person who enjoys using things built using your own two hands? 20-year-old Croatian tinkerer CroBuilder is like that too. He recently spent 10 hours in his workshop building a camera tripod from scratch.
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based photographer Chris McVeigh is incredibly good at building camera replicas with LEGO pieces. Last month we featured his LEGO recreation of the Leico M9-P Hermes rangefinder camera.
Now McVeigh (who goes by the name "Powerpig" online), is back with a beautiful new camera creation. This time he has built a Polaroid OneStep SX-70 Rainbow instant camera.
In October of last year, we shared a beautiful wooden homemade TLR camera by photographer Kevin Kadooka. It was a personal project at the time, and we remarked that it could be wildly popular if Kadooka began selling the camera as a build-it-yourself kit.
Well, Kadooka has done just that: the product, named Duo, will soon hit the market as a camera you can assemble yourself (it's like IKEA meets vintage photography).