doityourself

3D printers open up entire new vistas of creativity for photographers. Whether you’re into cosplay and creating costumes and props for your portraits or looking to achieve original shots using intricate rigging and mounting setups that are entirely bespoke to your use case, the ability to take a spool of plastic fiber and turn it into a complex and durable part using an appliance that can fit on a benchtop is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting advancements in the at-home maker movement in years.

This article is about how to make a time-lapse system that controls the lighting conditions and triggers the camera shutter for time-lapse plants.

Darkroom printing has long been an increasingly forgotten part of film photography. Even with many new photographers picking up film in recent years, a lot of them seem to ignore the practice of darkroom printing.

Musician, director, and video-game enthusiast Chris Graue of the 8-bit ska punk band Lo(u)ser filmed an amazing music video in late 2021 using a Nintendo Game Boy Camera. He has now created a tool that would've made the project much more convenient -- a tripod mount.

Erik de Poorter from Concept Crafted Creations on YouTube created a brilliant, motorized ceiling-mounted camera system that may be perfect for content creators.

A clever engineer has turned a computer mouse into a working camera. The fun DIY project may not deliver impeccable image quality, but it's a great way to repurpose an old mouse.

Romanian visual artist and photographer Vlad Moldovean has created a step-by-step guide for photographers and videographers to recreate the look of anamorphic bokeh using a traditional spherical lens.

Recently I was rummaging around in a box of old cameras, and I stumbled across a cute little Zeiss lens that I didn’t even know I had.

I was interested in seeing how well a pinhole would work on a small sensor (APS-C) DSLR so I decided to give it a try. All I needed to do was to drill a hole in the spare body cap, darken a piece of aluminum foil with a permanent marker, punch a small hole in it, and then tape it to the front of the body cap.

A decade ago, I stumbled upon a page where someone detailed their process for crafting their own instant film, something similar to Polaroid Type55 or the New55. At that time, the instructions seemed too complex for me to tackle, and I never ventured into the world of instant film creation.

Ben Krasnow of the YouTube channel Applied Science shows how to make images on living plant leaves in his latest video.

Videographers use a variety of camera movement techniques to capture dynamic motion. Underpinning many of the most visually interesting camera movements are dollies and sliders.

The recording of the patterns made by static electricity date back to the invention of the technique in 1777 by Georg Lichtenberg. Since he was the first to observe the patterns they are referred to as Lichtenberg figures.

A couple of years ago I have been occasionally shooting 35mm films with point-and-shoot still cameras while also having the desire to shoot motion picture films.

Italian builder Giovanni Aggiustatutto built a mechanized pan-tilt system to capture smooth, stable video without requiring hand movements. The build uses 3D-printed parts, wood, aluminum, and an Arduino Uno.

One of the greatest things about film photography is its friendliness toward do-it-yourself approaches. Want to hack together a working camera out of discount hardware store supplies? All the power to you! Want to shoot on art paper coated in a home-concocted emulsion, contact-printed using authentic techniques from the 1800s? Why not?

As a wildlife photographer, I'm always looking for ways to capture stunning images of animals in their natural habitats. One technique I've found to be incredibly effective is using a custom-made, DIY, DSLR camera trap, which is a camera setup that is triggered by the movement of an animal.

Belgium-based YouTuber and DIY enthusiast Handy Bear has created a simple organizing station that lets photographers easily manage charged and uncharged batteries.

The Mitutoyo long working distance objectives are popular in macro photography, but often difficult to mount to a camera.

Released in 1971, the Polaroid Big Shot was a funky, green plastic camera that was built for one thing: portraits. The plastic behemoth is simply designed, using a fixed focus 200mm, single-element plastic meniscus lens.

Photographer and computer science undergrad student Joshua Bird has created a 3D-printed movie camera that uses "normal" photo film canisters, with the goal of letting him enjoy the nostalgic look of film video without paying for expensive motion picture film.

A team of designers has created what it calls the Photon: a small, simple, light meter that is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico and costs a fraction of what most camera accessory companies charge for one.

This trinocular "wigglegram" lens creates vintage film-looking stereographs and is made with a combination of 3D-printed parts and scavenged disposable camera lenses.

The KineCAM is an instant camera-inspired "DIY" device that allows users to capture and create "animated" photographs (of physical GIFs) in the form of a kinegram.

Have you ever had a repeated inconvenience that finally makes you say to yourself, "Okay, I’m done with this garbage"? Well, that’s the exact feeling I had with using contrast filters on my enlarger. Anytime I wanted to use a contrast filter, I needed to use tape to hold it in place while I was printing.

Photographer and lens enthusiast Mathieu Stern has attached a disposable camera lens to a Sony Alpha A7 II to recreate the 1990s look.