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.
As a product photographer, I use paper in various different ways as a background for still-life photos to keep costs down for creative shooting. In this article, I'll show you how I do it and how you can do it too.
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.
A British man has built his own lens with a super fast 35mm f/0.4 equivalent bokeh that is constructed around an old episcope projector lens and a mechanical system for controlling focus.
A photographer has used his 3D printer to create an impressive 900mm reflector telescope that is so simple to put together that "it’s like assembling furniture from IKEA."
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.
I do a fair bit of macro photography in the studio, for both scientific and artistic purposes. I’ve used tripods, boom poles, and large copy stands to get the camera in close. The setups were often complicated, and I sometimes felt I was concentrating more on the gear than the photograph.
An industrious photographer 3D-printed replacement parts for his broken Olympus E-M1 after the camera froze in negative four-degrees Fahrenheit conditions while snowboarding.
Photographer Corrine Gretton-West booked a wet plate workshop with me before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Two years later we were finally able to do it.
Are you sometimes annoyed by having too many easy and convenient ways to take perfect photos? Don’t despair…
There is no denying that shooting on film is expensive. It is among the many reasons major studios have all shifted to using digital cameras for their movie-making. But even with the shift in technology and cost, there is just something appealing about the way these old analog cameras work. This is why engineer and designer Yuta Ikeya decided to make his own analog movie camera with 3D printing.
My name is David Windestal, and in this video and article, I will share how you can hack and modify a Game Boy Camera to mount serious camera lenses in order to shoot amazing lo-fi photos.
I occasionally like to do some light painting with strobes. To make that easier, I ripped off the legs of an old light stand so that it is just a handheld pole with a light. I also wanted to be able to control my camera with a remote when holding the light so that I can operate my camera on a tripod and do everything without an assistant.
Photographer Ronaldo Carvalho took an old and broken fixed-lens Olympus film camera lens and adapted it to work on a new Canon EOS R6, breathing new life into retired gear.
I purchased some of the new compact and foldable Godox softboxes (e.g. AD-S60S, AD-S65W, AD-S85S, etc) for my Godox AD300 Pros. They work just fine but I wanted to use the magnetic color gels from my AK-R1 kit with them, so I decided to design my own gel holder compatible with the AD300 Pro.
A cheap adapter from Sintech allows industrious photographers to take inexpensive SSDs and build their own CFexpress memory cards at home, allowing them to possibly save hundreds of dollars over "official" cards.
Battery technology has provided a plethora of ways to take power away from traditional wall outlets, including relatively small packs that can power photography lights. A man in China took that idea to the extreme by building a colossal 27,000,000mAh "portable" power bank.
Light shaping tools are very expensive. What if you could take any object and turn it into a modifier? That would save you a lot of money as well as give some unique results. In this article, I will share some everyday objects that you can turn into light modifiers to get different looks.