When low-quality photos or videos are posted online, people often say that they were shot with a "potato camera." But if you actually want to shoot photos with a literal potato camera, how would you go about doing so?
Dora Goodman, a maker of handcrafted cameras and straps, has released a new open source camera called the Goodman One that anyone can make if they have access to a 3D printer.
Photographer Mathieu Stern loves experimenting with very old and/or strange camera lenses, but his latest project is quite strange, even by his standards. He used a 3D printer and created a lens that looks like a giant eyeball.
My name is Gerald Gattringer, and I'm a photographer based in Austria. I recently built myself a custom star tracker for DSLRs, and it works pretty well! In this article, I'll share how I did it.
Polaroid cameras are fun to use, but shooting high numbers of instant photos can get very expensive very quickly. Tim Alex Jacobs, known as mitxela online, recently solved this problem by modifying a standard Polaroid camera into an instant camera that prints photos on thermal paper (the kind used for receipts).
Photographer Lucus Landers has built one of the most impressive do-it-yourself cameras we've ever seen. Called the Landers AL6, it's an all-aluminum camera that shoots medium format film.
I really enjoyed reading the Photography: The Definitive Visual History and it got me thinking about blending older forms of photography with newer digital equipment. I became obsessed with TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) cameras -- not for their ability to view through one lens while capturing an image through the other, but for the style of photography that this type of camera forces the photographer to adopt.
Professional portrait backdrops can cost over $1,000 apiece. If you'd like to get creative without getting broke, photographer Jessica Kobeissi has a thrifty DIY idea for you in this 4.5-minute video. She shows how you can create a custom backdrop using less than $5 in materials purchased from your local dollar store.
I recently got bored and decided to expand a super-budget project I'm working on. I love gridded beauty dishes for dramatic artsy stuff, beauty, and as a generally very versatile modifier. However, even a cheap one is out of budget for this project. So... I made one.
In December 2015, Shane Arsenault and I had started talking about a joint photography project with the purpose of using his 16”x20” Bellows Camera on a larger scale, which would give us the freedom to work outside a conventional studio space.
Want a remote motion-activated wildlife camera without shelling out big bucks? You can build one yourself using Raspberry Pi. PiBat recently built a pint-sized one, and it works quite well.
If you're looking to add a creative touch to your photos, you can consider making a DIY lens filter for custom effects. Here's a 3-minute video from COOPH that suggests 8 photo filters that you can make at home to spice up your photos in seconds.
Have a camera body cap lying around collecting dust? Did you know that you can easily turn it into a do-it-yourself pinhole lens? Matt from Blue Mantle Films created this 1.5-minute video tutorial that shows how.
Looking to make your own DIY overhead camera rig? Well, look no further - here is a 9-minute tutorial from photographer and YouTube star Peter McKinnon that shows you how to do just that.
Photographer Zev Hoover has created a rather unusual camera: it's one of the world's first 8x10 large format video cameras.
A few days ago, for the first time ever in my experience with wet plate photography, I mixed up collodion from scratch. I thought I'd share about the experience.
Trying to think of a photography-related present for a photography-obsessed person in your life? Here's a 4-minute video by COOPH that features 10 great DIY gift idea for this this holiday season.
Here's a 5-minute video by photographer Bill Lawson that shares 7 different DIY gobos (go-betweens) that you can use to introduce creative shadows to your portrait photos.
Here's a 2-minute tutorial overview from Circuito that will show you how to make your own automated turntable for photography. With the ability to start, stop, and trigger the camera all by itself, this turntable is great for people looking for a streamlined product photo workflow.
A few days ago, my girlfriend, Victoria was trying to take some photos of a bridesmaid gift she received the night before. She was trying to take these images on her phone and was not having any success. After a few unsuccessful attempts, she gave into my suggestion of taking these photos on her X-T10.
Do you enjoy making your own lighting gear instead of spending hefty fees for commercial products? Here's a 10-minute tutorial by photography instructor Joe Edelman on how to build and use your own strip light modifier for under $25.
Photographer Dieter Schneider started building cameras about five years ago, and last year he fashioned a 4x5 camera using a CNC Machine. This year he took things to yet another level, creating an 8x10 large format camera entirely by hand without using computer-aided machinery. You can watch the entire build process in the 35-minute video above.
In this 4-minute video from COOPH, learn how to hack your way to better photos using cardboard.
In this 5-minute video from The Slanted Lens, learn how to create a window in a seamless and add beautiful shafts of light into your studio shots.
Here's one of the more unusual camera modifications we've seen: a Chinese photographer over in the Xitek forums posted photos showing how he removed the electronic viewfinder from his Sony a7 full frame mirrorless camera. As you can see, his camera now looks more like a Sony a6500.
Albertino of Instax Magic created a unique camera that blends the old and the new. Half of it is made of LEGO, and half is a 90-year-old Zeiss-Ikon Trona folding plate camera.
If you're into photography, chances are that you've seen the tutorials where you are supposed to cut hearts out of paper to get heart-shaped bokeh. I recently decided to try to do this myself. But I soon realized that my scissor skills aren't anywhere near good enough to make nice looking heart shapes... let alone anything more advanced.
Last year, I built a (very rudimentary) 16x20” ultra large format camera out of a bunch of plywood, a pane of glass and some cheap blackout material from the local fabric shop. I borrowed a 20” military aerial lens off a friend and took it on the road to Latvia in my campervan. The problem with it was that I only made one dark slide, and this wasn’t exactly light tight!
Need to take portraits and don’t have access to a lighting kit? No worries – this 4-minute video from Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens will show you how you can turn a bathroom – or any room for that matter – into a softbox to create beautiful soft light.
Instagif is a new camera that's what you would get if you crossed a Polaroid instant camera with those moving pictures from the Harry Potter universe. The brainchild of Abhishek Singh, the camera captures a GIF and instantly "prints" it out on a little cartridge.