One of photographer Jeff Paradiso's big projects this past year was to create a sideways room for "anti-gravity" photos. These are images in which the viewer is disoriented in regards to which way is up.
Photographer Dario Morelli is a computer aided designer and programmer by trade. Several years ago, during a period of unemployment, he began diving deeply into the world of custom-made scanner cameras. There's an entire niche of photographers who are interested in the idea of turning flatbed scanners into digital cameras.
What you see is the result of one of Morelli's experiments. It's a medium format camera created by stuffing parts from an Epson scanner into a custom enclosure.
How do you build a quality DIY camera slider on the cheap? Who better to ask than the founder …
Want a simple battery-powered time-lapse camera that you can leave in locations for up to a year? A hacker who goes by "val3tra" is trying to build one. The goal of his project is a camera that can continuously photograph a scene for months or years on time while powered only by a handful of ordinary batteries.
Did you know that the Statue of Liberty started out as a dull copper color, but turned green over time due to oxidation occurring on the copper skin? The green patina (also called verdigris) can occur naturally or with human intervention on copper, brass, and bronze.
Know what else is brass? The body of the Leica M2 underneath the chrome surface. Photographer Bellamy Hunt used this fact to create a custom DIY special edition of the M2, the "Patina Edition."
Here's an interesting weekend photography project of moderate technical difficulty: the video above is a tutorial on how you can make a DIY coffee cup spy camera. The camera sees out of the cup's base and has a shutter that's triggered whenever you lift the cup and pretend to drink from it.
Want a camera that can automatically encrypt photos after taking them? A hacker named Doug did. After having this idea for years without seeing camera companies offer it, he decided to take matters into his own hands and make it happen himself.
What resulted is a new custom firmware for the Samsung NX300 that adds photo encryption to the camera.
Want to make a photography gift this holiday season instead of buying one? The video above offers 6 fun ideas for easy DIY photo gifts you can try your hand at. Each product is a different way to share your photography with someone.
The "Special Moments" camera is a cheap plastic 35mm camera that you can pick up at certain dollar stores for just a buck.
Photography enthusiast Daniel Goodale-Porter wanted to make his even more "special," so he set out to see how much he could improve the design and functionality of the camera, DIY-style.
Here's a clever idea we've never seen before: a card that "loads" as you open it. Pull the card out of the sleeve and watch as the progress bar magically "works."
Christopher Mitchell recently breathed some photographic life into a pice of technology many of us probably have languishing away in some drawer. With the help of an Arduino board, he’s found a way to Frankenstein a Texas Instruments graphing calculator and Game Boy Camera into the ArTICam: a 128–128 grayscale selfie machine.
Photographer Chuck Baker is a self-proclaimed "camera and darkroom equipment hoarder" who can't bear to get rid of gear even when it no longer works. Having a large number of enlargers in his collection, Baker recently decided to upcycle one of them by turning it into a working camera.
The large format camera you see about is what resulted from the project.
Need a piece of gear but can't find a reasonably priced option? Perhaps 3D printing could help.
That's what photographers Patrick Ludolph and Christian Steinkrüger. After not finding an affordable filter solution for his Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, Ludolph approached Steinkrüger -- a 3D printing hobbyist -- with the idea of creating a custom filter holder themselves.
Have you ever bought a GoPro just to realize that your life might not be quite as extreme as you initially thought? We've seen it before, and that’s exactly what happened recently with Instructables user Brooklyntonia.
But rather than watching her GoPro Hero 3 collect dust on a shelf, she decided to create an unlikely pair by Frankensteining together her unused GoPro and an old AGFA Ansco Shur Shot she had lying around.
If you're a fan of thrifty DIY substitutes for camera accessories, here's a quick and easy one for you: you can easily carry spare batteries (and other items and accessories) on your camera or bag strap using two strips of Velcro.
If you happen to have an old studio light sitting around, or you've found a set on Craigslist you’d like to pick up, we found a clever DIY hack that you should take a look at. Put together by Instructables user gmjhowe, the hack uses an IKEA lampshade and the bottom of a coffee tin to make a basic, but impressive, reflector.
When it comes to food photography, particularly beverages, one of the most difficult things to capture is steam. Not only do the drinks not stay warm for very long, but the steam is often nearly transparent and hard to catch on camera.
If you’re looking to make a DIY gift or keepsake, the folks at Photojojo have come up with a great project for you. It's a clever pop-up photo print that can be packed (and shipped) flat, then opened up to create a 3D version of the photograph of your choosing.
The black hole in the highly-anticipated Christopher Nolan blockbuster Interstellar has already made headlines. Put together with some serious mathematical help from astrophysicist Kip Thorne, it was so accurate he's actually going to get a few academic papers out of it.
It is, however, 100% CGI and as such outside of our purview as photographers... until now. Just a few days away from the movie's debut, Shanks FX and PBS decided to recreate the effect using all in-camera elements they've shown you how to create before.
British photographer and graphic designer Jake Howe recently began using a mechanical keyboard, and soon afterward he began wondering whether the same sturdy design could be used for a remote shutter release for his camera.
After some tinkering, Howe ended up making a sturdy and functional remote that features a one-of-a-kind design and a super sturdy build.
Digital download store Caravan Shoppe has a new product called the Click Click Camera Pack. It's a set of printable camera designs that are designed for kids crafts and decor.
Today I want to share how I created a few huge, Gigapixel photos, using a DIY panoramic head. Actually, it is not a panoramic head, because it not only goes right and left, but also up and down.
Halloween is only a few days away, and while there's plenty of photography themed carvings and Photoshop tutorials and other such shenanigans floating around, artist and photographer Nic Persinger might have just one-upped them all.
When his neighbors threw a pumpkin carving party, he decided to carve his into a camera... an actual, working instant camera with a Holga lens and Polaroid back and.
When it comes to carrying light stands, it’s usually best to use a dedicated case so they don’t get damaged and carrying them is less of a hassle. But there are times when a case isn’t a viable option. This usually leaves you struggling to carry them all at once or making multiple trips to the car just to get your light stands.
Thankfully, Dave Bode from Tuts Plus has come up with a cheap and clever gear-hack that makes carrying several mismatched light stands a lot less awkward.
A few days ago we shared a handy tutorial on how to properly light and capture a professional product shot of bottle, complete with a few neat 'tricks' that professional product photographers use to get the right look.
Well, if you were craving more tips and tricks like that, then this video by Tony Roslund is the perfect followup.
Looking for a personalized photo-related gag to pull for Halloween this year? Look no further than this head-in-a-jar prank. It's quite easy to pull off and doesn't require too much time or money.
When Benjamin Von Wong was commissioned to do a series of black and white portraits of SmugMug employees for the company’s gym, he knew he wasn’t going to be taking the easy route. But just because he was going to try to do something really cool, didn’t mean things needed to get expensive.
To spice up the sporty portraits, Von Wong decided to add water into the equation, and thanks to some help from the folks at SmugMug, they were able to make it rain for only $20.
Do you love the smell of fixer on your fingertips and the ominous red glow of the safety light, but don't have enough space to build your very own darkroom at home? Well, you might want to reevaluate your definition of "enough."
Instructables user wackybit recently managed to pack an entire darkroom into a decent-sized closet. And rather than keeping it a secret, he was kind enough to share his entire setup with the rest of us poor darkroom-less mortals.
In the above video by filmmaker David Sandberg, we see once again how, as with many things in the creative world, simple is quite often better. The behind-the-scenes video shows how he used nothing more than an IKEA lamp, some existing lights in his house, a coffer, and a bit of clever editing to put together a quality short horror film.
A single pixel color digital camera sounds an awful lot like a camera that captures a single bright red, green or blue dot, but when scientist Ben Greer set out to build his own single pixel camera, that's not what he was creating at all.
No, by moving a little autmatic arm in front of the sensor, scanning the scene multiple times, and then getting into a bit of math, he built something that can take actual pictures.
For part two of Shanks FX’s Back to the Future series, the DIY Special Effects artist decided to show you how to use forced perspective in your photography, using a model version the iconic Delorean from the cult classic films as an example.
Have you ever heard of the ‘donut selfie’? Probably not since it was just 'debuted' today, but it's actually pretty neat. A donut selfie is an interesting take on the video selfie that uses a panoramic technique to create a perpetual, seamless selfie across multiple locations.
We've seen similar techniques before, but never anything quite like Karen X. Cheng's new 'donut' version. Plus, you can create one from start to finish using just a phone.
We've shared in the past how a broken lens can be used for "freelensing," or taking tilt-shift-esque photographs.
Photographer and lens hacker Witono Halim did this by buying a broken 50mm f/1.8 online for $25, sawing a piece off, and combining everything into a ugly-yet-functional lens with $2 of duct tape.
For years and years I’ve worked on location, slowly I’ve moved over to tethered shooting and past two years I have been trying to shoot tethered as much as possible, I’m a big fan of it and I find it can really help a shoot and improve the images overall when everyone knows what they are working towards.
For those of you who aren’t up to speed on tethering it is effective connecting your camera to your computer and shooting to the hard drive on the computer rather than the memory card on the camera. There are a variety of advantages to using this method (speed, accuracy and client feedback amongst them) but there are hundreds of articles on various blogs about tethering so if you want to start using it just give it a google search. This post will be focusing on my case rather than the principles of tethered shooting.
What you see above is one of the most unusual pieces of lighting gear we’ve ever chanced across. Looking a bit like a prop from the upcoming Star Wars film, this contraption is actually a macro flash adapter designed by Polish photographers Agnieszka and Ernest Lysak.
Light modifiers don’t come cheap, especially softboxes. But, if you have enough DIY talent, some patience, and $20 bucks to spare, you’re only an hour or so away from having a custom-made softbox of your own.
Water droplets can make for some beautiful high-speed photography, but how do photographers manage to capture such precise moments? And what if you add even more elements to the equation, such as shooting a tiny pellet through the drop as it reaches its peak?
While repetition and luck are one option, a far better approach is to use a clever triggering system called the Camera Axe.
While many of us leave it up to the labs to print and mount our photographs, there are those who would like to try their own hand at it. For those more adventurous folks, Tony Roslund has put together a video tutorial that walks you through the process of printing and framing your own photographs from start to finish.
When it comes to camera bags, there’s no such thing as perfect. But if you’re looking to get as close to perfect for you as possible, the best way to go about it is probably to create your own.
That's exactly what Intructables user inspiredwood did with some help from his sewing skills, an old pair of jeans, and laptop bag he didn't need any more. The result is a unique, functional, upcycled camera bag that looks great to boot!
I'm 39 weeks into a 52 week project. Every week I go to this Art Prompt Generator for a random prompt and then spend a week taking a photo to match the prompt. This week was "Candy". I wasn't getting great results taking pictures of candy on plates, counters or other mundane surfaces so I thought I'd try a lightbox.
Got $30, a frisbee and some free time this week? Need a ring light? If you answered yes to both of those questions, we've got a neat, quick and super simple DIY tutorial that's perfect for you.
Want to shoot digital photos with a Leica rangefinder without having to buy an expensive digital Leica M? You can do so by creating a digital back for a film Leica M.
That's what Eugene Zaikonnikov did over the course of a year, creating a digital back for his Leica M4 with the sensor from a Canon 350D DSLR.
Hand-held macro photography presents a lot of challenges, but three of the most prevalent are: subject movement, camera shake, and harsh shadows. Fortunately, you don't have to carry around a bunch of gear to solve these issues. In fact, a cheap plastic cup will do the trick all by itself!
If you’ve been looking to get your hands on an LED ring light but don’t have the cash to burn, this weekend project is just for you. It’s called the Octo-Light, and it’s a DIY LED ring light create by Instructables user comsa42.
Joe Barone is a recent college grad who enjoys the process as much as the result. Inspired by his love for old objects, knack for tinkering with things and growing up in his parents’ hardware store, Barone brought the camera obscure into the 21st century recently with the help of an old scanner, a magnifying glass and duct tape... well, gold duct tape.
The result is a glorious steampunk-esque contraption that yields some rather impressive images.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to digitize your old slides and negatives, this tutorial is just for you. Created by Instructables user barkergk, this clever DIY setup uses minimal supplies, but leaves you with some impressive results.
“Until the 20th century, 'reality' was everything humans could touch, smell, see and hear. Since the initial publication of the chartered electromagnetic spectrum... humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see and hear is less than one millionth of reality.”
Sometimes we’re left working with inconsistent or otherwise less-than-ideal light sources. And while we can’t always make bad light good, we can certainly control some of the light quality if we get creative. Showing just how to do that is this clever little DIY Diffusion tip by the guys over at Film Riot.
Duct tape can often be a photographer's best friend. Cable management can often be a nightmare. The two don't naturally combine very well though, since duct tape can leave sticky reside on your cords after its removed.
If you ever need to wrap up cables and don't have any twist- or zip-ties on hand, here's how you can use duct tape to wrap cables without the cables getting sticky.
There are only a small number of cameras on the market these days that allow you to shoot digital photos while manually focusing with a working rangefinder. These cameras also cost quite a bit, so they're not exactly the type of thing most enthusiasts can pick up on a whim and play with.
Ollie Baker wanted one, but instead of paying the big bucks for one, he decided to convert an old film rangefinder into a working digital rangefinder.