handmade

MS Optics has added the Sonnetair 50mm f/1.3 to its lens catalog and like most of its lens designs, it has an old-school 60s vibe that screams a vintage look and buttery bokeh.

Clever Supply has announced its first adjustable leather strap, which joins the full collection of hand-made leather camera straps that the company has been making since its successful Kickstarter 2019.

In 2016 and again in 2018, PetaPixel featured the work of Dora Goodman, a woman who was adding hand-crafted elements to analog cameras. Fast forward to 2021, and Goodman has gone steps further and finally created cameras of her own design.

NYC fashion and commercial photographer Dani Diamond recently embarked on a mission to create "The Ultimate Photography Portfolio." By combining his love of photography with his skills as a woodworker and about 18 months of design & development, he was able to create something truly unique: a wooden, leather-bound, laser-engraved, 11x17-inch portfolio that's unlike anything we've seen before.

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.

Conventional synthetic camera straps may be either comfortable or attractive, but it can be difficult to find one that's both. Enter KIKI. Photographer Kishor Krishnamoorthi is producing a line of designer camera straps that are crafted in India from a breathable and soft, yet strong, cotton fabric.

Affordable, high-quality high speed cameras a tough to come by. But that might soon change, thanks to Kickstarter and years of work by one diligent engineer.

We've shared a number of projects over the years in which photographers create working cameras using wood, but we haven't seen a wooden lens yet... until now. That's what photographer René Smets of Lummen, Belgium, recently made, and the results are impressive.

After sharing his DIY square "ring light" build here back in July, photographer Isiah Xiong is back again with another DIY project. This time, Xiong is explaining how he built a DIY version of the $300 the Eyelighter reflector for around $40 to $50 in materials.

You can find the step-by-step tutorial in the 3-minute video above.

Adriana Napolitano is a 31-year-old Italian artist and photographer who creates beautiful paper props by hand for portrait and advertising photo shoots. Her creations include everything from food to costumes to phones to water gushing out of a crying woman's face.

We've shown off a number of impressive DIY pinhole cameras before, but this one, designed by Scott Yu-Jan, might just take the cake. Made almost entirely out of wood, his creation is about as robust and beautifully wrought as pinhole cameras get.

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of the company that goes by the name MS Optical, and we won't blame you. It’s a one-man operation, run by Mr. Sadayasu Miyazaki from Honcho, Japan. But you might want to take not of them now.

Specializing in unique lens designs, MS Optical focuses on creating small pancake lenses for the Leica M Mount. But MS Optical’s latest creation leaves the 'pancake' title in the dust... this thing should be called a crepe lens.

Leather messenger bag-style camera bags don't come cheap. A cursory search on B&H Photo will reveal prices that often run in the $300+ range for something with decent storage space. Fortunately, Etsy seller LeftoverStudio offers a hand-crafted, high-quality alternative that will cost you half as much.

There a good few Instagram-related services out there that offer you different ways to print, send and/or use your favorite Instagram shots. From Postagram, which lets you send your Instagrams as (sometimes free) postcards to friends, to the Nike web app that allowed you to decorate your sneakers based on an Instagram photo, we've seen quite a few applications.

The most recent idea to catch our eye is Pixelist, and it's gotten our attention because, unlike any of the rest, it turns your Instagrams into a hand-crafted product.

Earlier this week, we shared how photography student Mark Hilton has been hard at work constructing a 20x16-inch ultra-large-format camera by hand. If you found that impressive, get a load of photographer Tim Pearse's handmade 20x24-inch view camera.

South East England-based photography student Mark Hilton came up with an ambitious New Year's resolution this year: he's in the process of building his own 20x16 "ultra-large-format" camera by hand. It's a camera that's designed to expose Ilford Harman Direct Positive paper.

Feast your eyes on this gorgeous twin-lens reflex camera that was designed and built from scratch by photographer Kevin Kadooka, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Portland. It uses a Mamiya-Sekor 105mm f/3.5 Chrome lens and has a Polaroid back for shooting 4.25x3.5-inch instant film, and is crafted out of laser-cut birch plywood.

This fascinating video by Hayley Morris for Hilary Hahn and Hauschka's "Bounce Bounce" is both a very creative use of stop motion, and a testament to her skill as a craftsman. She actually created the entire underwater world, sketching and creating the characters herself.

This might look like a pile of garbage, but it’s actually one of the homemade camera used by photographer …

When husband and wife photography duo Jodi and Kurt got married last year, they were determined to do something photography-related for the guys' boutonnières. Luckily for them, Kurt's sister Lynn is a brilliant wedding stylist who helped make these one-of-a-kind designs. Kurt's featured an old camera lens, while the best man's was a flower made from film negatives.

If you’ve ever wanted a lens to hug at night but found your actual glass to be a bit …

Beth Blafka (known as bethtastic on Etsy) makes hand casted resin bangles that …

Erin Paysse sells one-of-a-kind pinhole cameras created by upcycling vintage hardback books. Each …

Mats Wernersson's website is aptly named, "The Camera Maker". Wernersson creates his own custom cameras by hand, making everything from 9x12 field cameras to "frankencameras" created for specific purposes from existing bodies. The above camera is a 3D 35mm camera created by fusing two Konica FS1 bodies together.