Do It Yourself

Sometimes, the best products are the ones you make yourself. PetaPixel is your guide to custom lenses, handmade camera rigs, custom-coded artificial intelligence cameras, and the 3D-printed parts that makes photography truly personal.
Michael Zhang

Man Disguises Digital Camera as 70-Year-Old Vintage Camera to Troll Strangers

John (AKA knife141) loves turning junk into unusual creations, and one day came up with idea of building a camera for the sole purpose of confusing strangers. He took a $15 digicam and transformed it into a Argus C3 from the mid-1900s:

My goal was to install a modern digital camera inside the housing of an old, obsolete camera. I thought it might be fun to pull this camera out in a crowd of people and make them wonder why in the world an old man would continue to use a camera that was obviously as old as he was, as opposed to something more modern.

[...] I've had a lot of fun with this camera, taking it places and watching people's puzzled looks as I appear to be using an old beat-up camera that was made about the time I was born! I have even had people approach me and ask if I can still get film developed -- with no idea that the heart of my camera is actually digital! I have also had people ask me how many pictures I can take with the camera, and they always look puzzled when I tell them, "Oh, around 4,000 or so."

Michael Zhang

Make a Pair of Paper Aperture Glasses

Instructables user art.makes has a tutorial on how you can make a pair of paper iris glasses with adjustable apertures. You could definitely build upon the idea to make each side more like a camera lens (e.g. adding barrels, f-stop values) -- perhaps as part of a geeky Halloween costume?

Michael Zhang

Give Your Room a Beautiful Skyline View Using an Ordinary Printer

After moving into their new dorm room, Caleb Ungewitter and his roommate Kyle decided that their walls looked too empty, so they decided to decorate it with a photo. Not just any photo, mind you, but a gigantic do-it-yourself print of a beautiful city skyline. Using a free program called The Rasterbator, they converted the photograph into 152 separate frames, which they printed out themselves and attached to the wall in a grid.

Michael Zhang

Clever Wedding Photo Booth Made Using a Canon T3i

We've seen DSLR photo booth projects before, but usually they're just simple ways for guests at an event to take self-portraits of themselves. Kevin over at I Dream In Code actually made a fancy photo booth for his brother's wedding that prints out a nice keepsake for guests.

Michael Zhang

Geeky Film Canister Christmas Lights

Have a bunch of film canisters lying around and not sure what to do with them? You could use them to geekify your Christmas lights by punching a hole in the caps and sticking the lights in.

Michael Zhang

Make a DIY Lens Cap Using a Soda Can

mr-korn over at Lomography recently snagged a cheap Olympus Zuiko 50mm lens on eBay, but the lens didn't come with a lens cap. Rather than try and find a replacement cap for that particular lens, he decided to craft his own DIY cap using a can of Coke.

Michael Zhang

Bored at Work, Engineer Builds a Camera Out of Trash

Mechanical engineer and Flickr user Some Guy (Art) was bored at his job where picture taking was explicitly disallowed, so he did what any rebellious photo-fanatic would do: build a makeshift camera out of trash! Bringing $5 worth of parts (e.g. dowels, bolts, super glue) from home, he successfully turned some machine core -- which he calls "cardboard toilet paper tube on steroids" -- into a 35mm pinhole camera.

Michael Zhang

How to Scan Film Using Your Ordinary Flatbed Scanner

If you've tried to scan film using an ordinary flatbed scanner as you would a piece of paper, you've probably discovered that it didn't turn out very well. The reason is because film needs to be illuminated from behind, while conventional scanners capture light that's reflected off what they're scanning. Before you give up hope and shell out money for a film scanner, here's some good news: you can build a cheap and simple cardboard adapter that turns any scanner into a film scanner!

Michael Zhang

An Electronic (Not So) Instant Camera

Niklas Roy built a unique electronic "instant" camera using an old black & white video camera and thermal receipt printer. When turned on, the printer slowly prints the live video feed from the camera onto cheap receipt paper. Since the image isn't stored anywhere first, the subject has to remain still during the three minutes it takes for the image to be printed.

Michael Zhang

Wave this Programmable “Light Saber” to Light Paint Words and Images

Gavin of Sydney, Australia created an awesome 2-meter long programmable staff that makes painting giant words and images as easy as waving/walking the staff around during a long-exposure photograph. The staff, which he call the LightScythe (we would have called it the "Lightsaber"), was inspired by the Wi-Fi light painting project we shared here earlier this year.

The hardware is pretty simple. There’s a 2m programmable LED strip inside an acrylic tube, which is controlled from a small receiver and battery pack. A laptop PC with a wireless Xbee link sends the image data to the scythe at a specified time. [#]

Vadim Gordin

How to Turn an Old Seatbelt into a Useful Camera Sling

Editor's note: The guest author of this DIY tutorial, Vadim Gordin, is also selling DIY kits and ready-made Lens Loop slings for $15 and $25, respectively. You can find the project over on Kickstarter.

Here's a DIY camera strap I came up with 2 years ago and have been steadily revising as I use it while traveling and shooting all over the country. The design is simpler, more comfortable, and more attractive than any of the other commercially available slings. I hope that by sharing my design here, I can generate interest in my project and help DIYers make a great camera sling on their first try.

Michael Zhang

Cheap DSLR Follow Focus Kit that Lets You Remember Focus Points

DSLR Solutions has a new follow focus kit that allows you to keep track of focus points without being bulky or expensive. The $60 kit is basically a clamp, a velcro strap, and some metal markers that attach to the strap. Attaching the markers allows you to bounce between focus points, or keep track of a number of points if you have multiple subjects. We've featured a number of DIY follow focus solutions here in the past, but using a velcro strap and markers is something we haven't seen before.