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Amazon Has $14 AmazonBasics Canon and Nikon Camera Batteries
Did you know that you can buy AmazonBasics-branded batteries for certain Canon and Nikon cameras on Amazon? They're significantly cheaper than their Canon and Nikon-branded counterparts.
Did you know that you can buy AmazonBasics-branded batteries for certain Canon and Nikon cameras on Amazon? They're significantly cheaper than their Canon and Nikon-branded counterparts.
Want a cheap way of shooting right under the surface of water without having to buy a special housing for your camera? Alex over at I did a thing recently built himself a PVC periscope-style device for a total cost of around $10, and the results are great.
Want a cheap and easy way to white balance photos without having to buy a color checker or special cards? Here's a neat hack: you can actually use ordinary white plumber's tape -- the kind you use to seal pipe threads.
After seeing photographer Skyler Burt's experiments with lighting food photos using a cheap work light, photographer Jessica Kobeissi recently purchased that same $20 light from Home Depot for an experimental portrait shoot.
My family and I recently moved back up to North Carolina. It feels so good to be back in the place we feel is home to us. Now surrounded again by all this State’s natural beauty and wildlife, I’ve had quite the itch to ramp up my efforts in bird photography that began down in Florida.
How does a $20 work light from a hardware store compare to a $900 studio strobe when it comes to food photography? Photographer Skyler Burt of We Eat Together recently decided to find out. He pitted a HDX 500w halogen work light against a $900 Elinchrom Pro HD 500W monolight.
Here's a 6-minute educational video by Shutterstock in which filmmaker Todd Blankenship discusses the basics of diffusing light and introduces three cheap options for doing so... including a $5 shower curtain.
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.
There is an almost endless supply of lighting modifiers available on the market right now, some are cheap and some of the better ones are certainly a lot more expensive. But does cost directly relate to quality? Well, a lot of the time yes it does if you're referring to build quality.
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.
The Sainsonic Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 is a lens you can buy for just $170 for mirrorless cameras (Sony E, Canon EOS-M, Micro Four Thirds, and Fujifilm X) that delivers some beautiful bokeh. Here's a 10-minute video by Kai Wong that shows what this lens can do.
Cameras and lenses are expensive. Really expensive. Even the cheapest entry-level DSLR kit today costs $500 or more. But what if you buy the cheapest possible used DSLR? A camera that's over 10 years old? How would it stack up against today's modern cameras? I was curious about this, so I decided to find out for myself.
Last year, I bought a macro lens for the summer. Just a normal one with 1x magnification. I fell into a beautiful and mesmerizing world of minuscule flowers and bugs. I found that in macro photography, you don't have to travel to beautiful places to take beautiful photos -- you can just walk around in your backyard, and discover a whole new world.
French photographer Philippe Echaroux recently decided to challenge himself in the area of shooting portraits of strangers. Instead of using high-end camera equipment, he decided to use an iPhone and light his subjects using a McDonald's Big Mac box.
Nearly every professional studio I’ve ever used has these "polyboards" and you‘ve probably even seen them yourself but may not have known what they’re used for. Polyboards are polystyrene boards that usually measure 4 feet wide by 8 feet high and are normally 2 inches thick. One of the other defining characteristics is that they are often white on one side and black on the other.
Did you know that Amazon sells a $28 flash for Canon and Nikon DSLRs under its in-house brand AmazonBasics? If you've wanted to try your hand at using a flash without investing too much money at first, this one is an option you may want to consider.
High-end photo backdrops can cost over $1,000 apiece. When photographer Jeremy Cowart couldn't find a backdrop he needed a few days ago, he had an idea: Cowart drew his own backdrop on an iPad Pro and printed it out at 40x80 inches on a $4,000 professional Canon printer.
If you're a Nikon F-mount user, the Chinese lens manufacturer Yongnuo has two new lenses headed your way. The first is a small 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens, and the second is a 100mm f/2.
Here’s a quick DIY video from Kyle Martin on how to create an extremely powerful suction mount for your GoPro instead of buying GoPro's $40 suction mount. The video is 6 minutes and will show you how to create the mount for around $20 in materials.
Beauty dishes are great pieces of equipment to have in your lighting arsenal, but they come at a price. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a dish, yet using a cheap shoot-through umbrella can easily produce the same effect, as this 10-minute tutorial by Joe Edelman shows.
Action shots of cars in movement are often taken with a ‘car rig’ – basically a long pole that is attached to the car, with a camera mounted on the end. A professional car rig can cost in the thousands, but this 13 minute video from Practical Photography will teach you to make your own for under $40.
Let's say you spent pretty much all of your camera budget on a shiny new $1,400 Sony a6500 mirrorless camera, yet you want a super telephoto lens for getting way up close to subjects. Here's a thrifty option you could consider: buy a cheapo 500mm lens, Sony adapter, and 2x teleconverter for just $80.
I needed a monitor hood for quite some time but wasn't willing to pay the retail prices charged for them, so I decided to build one myself. In this tutorial I'll show you how to build your own DIY monitor hood for less than $12.
I have a studio. For those of you that know me -- the author of the Studio Anywhere books, which focus on shooting anywhere but a studio -- this statement may sound oxymoronic or even blasphemous. Nonetheless, after years of shooting in my cramped basement, I finally outgrew my space and needed a slightly larger, dedicated space to have for working with clients.
My name is Nick Fancher and I'm a portrait and commercial photographer who specializes in lighting, specifically with the use of small flash in unconventional locations.
Are you in need of a new camera bag, but you're on a budget and still want something durable? An army surplus store may be your answer.
Typically, the term “gobo” is reserved for the lens filters and patterns that are affixed to theater lights. The terms “flag” or “cucloris/cookie” are actually more accurate for what we’re going to be using in this post, which is an object placed between the light and the subject, but not attached to it.
Recently, I had a portrait shoot with the legendary poet, rapper, and actor Saul Williams. It began with a simple stroke of luck: I saw he was scheduled to perform at a local club near my house, and so I did a quick search for the name of his manager. I easily found it and e-mailed them, introducing myself and explained that I would like to take his portrait.
For several years now, Camranger has been pretty much the only choice if you want to tether your Nikon, Sony or Canon DSLR wirelessly to your phone or tablet.