Do It Yourself

Photographer Don Barnard made this video tutorial showing how to convert a styrofoam shipping box into a DIY softbox. The video is pretty in-depth and runs nearly 10 minutes, but the basic idea is to line the inside of the box with some reflective material, stick a strong light inside, and cover it with some cloth to soften the light. It's a neat way to make a useful lighting tool for under $20. Check out some sample photos taken with the softbox here.

When Eadweard Muybridge shot the first motion picture of a galloping horse back in 1878, he used 24 individual cameras placed 27 inches apart, using trip wires to fire off each camera one thousandth of a second after the previous one. With fancy high-speed camera rentals priced at thousands of dollars a day, YouTube member Destin came up with a Muybridge-esque technique for capturing a bullet flying through the air using an ordinary DSLR: he shoots a bullet for each frame and uses a fancy …

Here's another video tutorial teaching how to give your bokeh custom shapes.

Photographer Matthew Nicholson created this paper Leica M3 that's a working pinhole camera. It's loaded with 35mm film, and even the strap is realistic and made with paper!

Now here's something we haven't seen before: Flickr user Damon Hair made this cheap DIY color checker using mat board, foam core, and paint swatches matched with pantone colors from a local paint/hardware store.

If you need a cheap way to bounce some light, don't want to spend a wad of cash on a real reflector from a camera shop, and don't want to take the time to make a cardboard and aluminum foil reflector, you can buy a cheap car sun shade (less than $10 at Walmart) as a cheap reflector. They're lightweight, foldable, and reflect light well -- just make sure the reflective surface is white or silver.

Photographer Adrian Onsen wanted to use the AI Servo autofocus mode on his Canon 40D in low-light situations, but found that the AF assist beam is only emitted once until focus is achieved rather than every time the camera needs to refocus. He then purchased a laser pointer from a dollar store, disassembled it to obtain a defocused beam of light, and attached it to the top of his camera. The hacked-together AF assist tool ended up working pretty well -- Onsen was able to shoot sharper photos at …

Reflector mounts (the things that attach a reflector to your bike) are so cheap that bike shops often give them away for free. Add a standard tripod screw, some washers, and some wing nuts, and you'll have a super cheap camera mount that you can attach to a bicycle (it's also a way to attach a camera to some random pole if you need to). You can also find a text version of this tutorial over on Instructables.

DC Watch has a tutorial on how to make your own bellows on which you can use various lenses (toy binoculars, magnifying glass, etc...). Print out the PDF template, then follow the video tutorial above to get started. Here's a Google Translated version of the tutorial.

Flickr user Betty Ann recycled a photography book by transforming pages into these nifty pillow boxes, with each one showing a different camera. Stick a gift certificate to your favorite local camera shop into one and it'll make the perfect gift for a photography-lovin' friend! You can find a step-by-step tutorial on how to make your own pillow box over on eHow.

Photographer Darren Samuelson spent seven months building a massive homemade large-format camera that's about six-feet-long when fully extended. He shoots with 14×36-inch x-ray film that's about 1/12th the cost of ordinary photographic film but much harder to develop.

Redscale is a technique where film is exposed on the wrong side -- rather than having the light hit the emulsion directly, you expose the film through the non-sensitive side.

Mother's Day is just around the corner, and if you haven't gotten anything for your mom yet we think these tiny Polaroid magnets would make an awesome gift. Simply download the template, add your photos, print them out, glue them to chipboard, and attach a magnet to the back. Graphic designer Jennifer Kirk has a writeup and tutorial over on her blog Ambrosia Girl.

National Geographic created this nifty little video teaching how to turn any room with a view into a giant camera obscura. For an even more challenging project, you can try setting up some photo-sensitive paper (either photo paper or paper you paint with emulsion yourself) on the wall to shoot giant photos with your giant camera obscura.

If you have an old or broken flatbed scanner lying around and gathering dust, a neat thing you can do is convert it into a cheap, do-it-yourself lightbox for viewing negatives and slides. Photo-enthusiast James Wilson did this as a weekend project: …

Here's a neat idea for displaying your photos: pick up a set of blank Russian nesting dolls, saw little slits into the top, paint them, and use them as a cute set of photo holders! Check out the full tutorial here.

Flickr user Steve Kushnir came up with this neat idea of building a cheap DIY diffuser using a Pringles can, two layers of paper towels, and some rubber bands. He attached it to his Nikon D5000's popup flash and uses it for macro photographs of creepy crawlies.

Francesco Capponi was inspired yesterday (AKA Easter and World Pinhole Photography Day) to create pinhole cameras out of eggs. He painted the insides with emulsion to make it light-sensitive after drilling a hole, exposed it through a pinhole, then filled the egg with processing and fixing chemicals to develop the photo. You can find a full walkthrough of his process over on Lomography. The process isn't easy -- in creating four satisfactory photos Capponi ended up destroying fifty eggs!

Andrew Lathrop came up with this novel way of building a simple radiation detector using an old compact camera, plastic scintillators, some reflective material, and black tape. A scintillator is material that lights up when exposed to radiation, and might be a little difficult for you to get your hands on unless you work in a science lab. Lathrop sent his idea to newspapers in Japan after the recent earthquake, but none of them decided to publish it.

Photographer Cary Norton built a working 4x5 large format camera using Lego bricks, a 127mm lens he purchased for $40 on eBay, and a film holder and ground glass in the back.

IT consultant and photo enthusiast Viktor Takacs didn't have much success when he tried capturing lightning on camera, so he decided to build this fancy do-it-yourself trigger (which he named "Zeus") that automatically snaps a photo whenever the photodiode detects a flash of lightning. He even built a knob into the device that can be used to adjust sensitivity. The demo above shows the trigger reacting to manually triggered flashes from a strobe.

You can now build you own version of the cardboard Hasselblad pinhole camera that we featured a couple days ago. Kelly Angood has released a PDF with the template and detailed instructions for putting the pieces together. The finished product is a working pinhole camera that takes 120 35mm film.

Make just published this short but informative tutorial on how to turn your DSLR into a pinhole camera by punching a hole in a body cap. If you have a spare body cap lying around (how often do you use those things anyway?) this can be a fun way to experiment with your camera.

If Doctor Octopus were to design a DIY flash accessory, it might look a little something like this. German microbiologist Marcell Nikolausz has been experimenting with using fiber optics to split a single flash unit's light into multiple light sources. Optical fibers are threaded through Gorillapod-style Loc-Line channels, allowing flexible and stable positioning of the light sources. Each individual light source can be controlled using various modifiers (e.g. diffusers, gels, etc..), changing …

Have an unloved camera strap lying around? You can repurpose it as a strap for a shoulder bag! This could be a good upgrade for a bag that doesn't fit very nicely over your shoulder, or could be a fun gift idea for your photography-lovin' girlfriend or wife. You can find a tutorial on how to do this over on Photojojo.

Flickr user Chase Lewis created this working pinhole camera using ordinary LEGO pieces (we featured an uber-fancy LEGO Mindstorm camera before) for his high school film photography course.

Tiffany Threadgould of RePlayGround had the awesome idea of building a room divider using old 35mm film canisters. She spent three months befriending film processing shops in New York and collecting the 1,000+ canisters needed for the project.

How do photographers get those wide images that bleed through the edges of the negative, showing the sprocket holes? It's a technique that allows your to create stunning panoramic images -- these little bits of film become art in themselves. These photographs are achieved by loading 35mm film into a 120 medium format camera. This tutorial was written with the Holga in mind, but the same technique works for other 120 cameras as well.

Here's a fun project for you film-lovers: use

YouTube user havok2 created this creative follow focus using LEGO Mindstorm pieces. It's lightweight, and can be adjusted to fit on different sized lenses. There's more photographs of the rig here, and there's even a blueprint 3D tutorial video if you're interested in building your own.

For Christmas, I received a Canon 60D. I’m definitely still learning how to use it, but I’m excited to have it. The first big problem I encountered, besides the need for more regular exercise so I can lift the beast, is that I am going to lose the camera lens cap. I take this cover off the lens and leave it everywhere. I had the camera for about 4 days before I was considering checking the price on replacing it. Lucky for me, I came up with a better idea while I still knew where it was.

I had some stuff lying around as well as saw some parts as I was out and thought this would be fun to make. I have around $20 invested in parts. On eBay I saw ring lights for anywhere around $40 on up, so this will save you money and it was fun to make.

If you use the LCD on your DSLR for shooting images or video, you probably know how much of a pain it is when sunlight shines directly on it, preventing you from seeing whether the scene is in focus. LCD viewfinders solve that problem, but can have devastating effects on your wallet. If you're just a hobbyist that wants a simple LCD viewfinder for cheap, this video tutorial will teach you how to make one with items you probably have lying around the house worth $5.

Here's a nifty behind-the-scenes video tutorial by photographer Jay P. Morgan that shows how to make a cheap DIY rain machine for adding rain to your photographs.

This DIY viewfinder was created using LEGO bricks and components from a disposable camera and CD-ROM drive. It adds an optical viewfinder to the Sony NEX-5's electronic one, providing a view equivalent to a 24mm or 28mm lens, and mounts neatly to the camera via the hot shoe.

Erik Pettersson was looking for a nice digital frame, but found that all the commercially available ones were too small, ugly, and cheap looking. He had an old Thinkpad T42 laptop lying around, so he decided to make his own custom frame. After installing Linux and writing some custom scripts for operating the frame, he disassembled it and joined it with a nice-looking IKEA frame. Best of all, he documented his entire process and published it online as a tutorial for those who want to make their …

You've likely seen this DIY trick before, but it doesn't hurt to share this for those who haven't. Instead of carrying around a tripod or monopod, you can easily stabilize your camera using a washer, some string, and a bolt. It's a cheap and easy stabilizer that you can carry around with you in your camera bag for those moments when you wish you had a steadier hand.

Need to hold down the shutter release for extended periods of time, but don't want to shell out money for a remote shutter release? Flickr user Dennis Calvert found that a pencil eraser and hair tie do the job well, allowing you to do star trail photographs with bulb mode.

I needed a foot switch for my DSLR camera so that I could take hands-free pictures. On a long-shot, I went down to the local Radioshack to see if they had one. As expected, they didn't have any camera foot switches, but I did luck out that they had all the parts necessary to build my own. Here is how to throw together a 5-minute camera foot switch with easily obtainable parts from Radioshack.

Time-lapses are usually created using intervalometers -- devices that electronically trigger the shutter on a camera at set intervals for long periods of time -- but what if you don't have a camera that can use one? If you're good with your hands, you can create a mechanical "intervalometer" that uses a motorized finger to trigger your shutter instead. Instructables member Constructer wrote up a pretty neat tutorial showing how you can build one yourself.

Pinhole cameras are usually very low-tech and dumbed-down in their operation, but how would one go about making it fancier like a digital camera? Basil Shikin decided to build his own custom pinhole camera using Lego Mindstorms, adding all sorts of awesome features to an ordinarily simple kind of camera. Features include automatic shutter speed calculation using a sensor, automatic film rewind, and the tracking of how much film remains.

If you'd like to take "lo-fi" photographs with your DSLR, but don't want to spend money on a pricey specialty lens just for this purpose, you're in luck. In this tutorial I'll be showing you a simple "mod" with which you can get a similar effect for no money at all! You’ll need a piece of scotch tape, scissors and a lens.

If your wall needs decorating and you have a lot of time on your hands (and we mean a lot), you can try making a giant calendar for you wall with photos. All you need to do is go photo-hunting for numbers, days of the week, and filler squares. Then print out the photos as squares and arrange them on your wall based on the current month.

I really love using old lenses on modern digital cameras, but many old lenses have cosmetic issues that make them a little less pleasant to use. Here are a few very cheap and easy things you can do to make these old lenses a little nicer to look at and to use. I don't advocate doing this to rare collectible lenses; this is for "user" lenses.

While adding movement to time-lapse videos is cool, the special equipment (e.g. dollies, cranes, etc...) you need can be pricey. Derek Mellott couldn't afford to shell out hundreds of bucks for a dolly, so he decided to make his own using things found in his garage. His resulting setup included tripods, a cable management tray, a TI-calculator as an intervalometer, and a BBQ rotisserie motor to slowly pull the camera along.

If you're planning to give any gifts to photography-enthusiasts this Christmas, you can try adding a little awesomeness to the presentation by creating your own ribbon bows out of film. All you need to do is cut the film strip into narrower pieces, and arrange the loops in the shape you'd like.

Last week we shared the awesome fact that chickens have image stabilized heads. If you've been wondering about it, it's actually called the vestibulo-ocular reflex. Naturally (and... nerdily?) people started suggesting that someone should try making a steadicam using a chicken. Well, YouTube user Destin actually went ahead and did it... The results can be seen in the video above.

Cinematographer Tom Guilmette has a simple way you can shoot your own aerial shots if flying kites or RC planes/helicopters isn't for you: fill up a large number of helium balloons, attach a camera to them, and send it high into the air attached to a fishing pole. Guilmette attached a GoPro HD camera to 30 balloons, and was able to get some remarkably smooth footage from 400+ feet in the air. Be warned though... doing this in high winds or near trees can be risky business.

I have always been enthralled ring flashes, but they are so expensive! I recently found a pizza box ring flash how to, but it didn’t go on my camera (it was meant as an off camera ring flash) so I made some changes. And here, for all to use, is my version of the pizza box ring flash.

What does a rainbow mean to you? An interesting atmospheric phenomena.... gay pride... the 42nd Infantry Division? To me a rainbow screams, "Polaroid Corporation!". Even when Polaroid was actually making cameras, the camera straps were disappointingly plain vanilla. Polaroid missed a critical branding opportunity! In this tutorial, I'll attempt to make a new camera strap for my Polaroid 100 camera by recycling rainbow colored luggage belts.