I’ve written about this project in the past, as I originally made the rain machine and shot with it in 2012, but we’ve now done it in video form! Hopefully it shows a little more detail about the construction and how I shot with it.
It’s not often I get to shoot very simple, clean white light shots, but in a recent shoot the model asked if she could get some updated ‘Polaroids’. For those of you not familiar with the term when used in reference to a model shoot, it’s actually not the now-obsolete and ludicrously expensive single-shot film, but a request for very basic portraits of the model for their agency.
Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami loves experimenting with camera equipment, from flipping a lens element for "magic bokeh" to creating a working analog watch camera. His latest experiment is also off the beaten path: he found that a display from a broken laptop works perfectly as a view camera's ground glass.
After Canon handed out camera lens mugs at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, novelty lens look-alike mugs and cups have flooded the market. If you've received one or more of them as gifts, one thing you can do is turn them into camera lens desk lamps.
After our flight to NYC got canceled last summer, we got stuck in Chicago for one night with no light painting tubes, no dress, no tripods, and no battery chargers. During the shuttle ride to the hotel, we started joking about using a bed sheet to fake a dress and to use whatever we could find in the hotel room as a light-painting tool.
What do you get when you combine a pixelstick with a drone? Makers Ivan Miranda and Tom Stanton recently decided to show all of us by creating a custom light stick drone that can be used to shoot light-painting photos in the sky.
If you’re like me and you’ve tried to attach gels to your lights in the past, you’ve likely resorted to using one of the many types of sticky tapes available. When I used to manage a studio, I would see all manner of tapes being used to attach gels to hot modifiers.
Wildlife photographers sometimes set up camera traps to capture images of elusive animals. Former NASA engineer Mark Rober recently spent months creating a glitter-bomb fart-spray camera trap to capture images of elusive package thieves. As the 11-minute video above shows, the results were glorious.
Back in July 2018, photographer Oscar Oweson started an effort to build a homemade rangefinder camera -- a 6x7 camera designed to be like an all-mechanical version of the Mamiya 7. Months later, the Panomicron Holmium was born.
I love bokeh and wanted to incorporate it into some upcoming holiday-themed beauty shoots. Well, I didn't want to shoot in the cold and I really didn't want to buy strings of lights (or generally spend any money at all) so I put together this great backdrop with basically just tinfoil.
For a long time, I have been building sets or props for my images, which in time developed into making and selling furniture as a hobby business. I thought it about time I made videos detailing the process of those builds and the “high budget” results that can be achieved with little financial outlay and a little DIY.
If you have a TLR camera, here's a simple trick you can try to help you to focus more easily. All you'll need is some rubber bands, scissors, aluminum foil, and a ruler (optional).
For many years, I have been modifying and adapting lighting and camera equipment to better fit my style of shooting. The process of altering lighting gear, as well as combining products that were not originally intended to work together, is of particular importance to me these days, as I constantly mix and match the best from many different brands.
Light diffusion panels can cost $80 to $100 or more when purchased retailed, but very little when you make them yourself, and to do so is very simple. I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked about my diffusion panels and where I get them from. The ones I use in my studio have all been custom-made to fit my needs, and I’ll show you just how to make your own.
Freelance film photographer Casey Cavanaugh has always wanted a Hasselblad Xpan, but the cameras cost thousands of dollars used and have been out of his reach. So, Cavanaugh decided to build his own.
Over the last 5 years, drones have consumed every part of my life. From using aerial systems to carry cameras as a service provider with Drone Dudes, to selling drones with Dronefly, or designing and making drones in China with Yuneec, I’ve been involved in all aspects of the drone industry.
Photographer Mathieu Stern is a fan of creating strange lenses, but his latest creation is quite unusual, even by his standards. Stern visited Iceland and created a working lens out of ice from an iceberg.
Polaroid began to market the SX-70 camera in Florida in late 1972, about 46 years ago. The camera was a technology and design icon from day one, the brainchild of Dr. Edwin Land.
Good photos have become commonplace. Smartphones have demystified camera technicalities in the past decade, and its pervasive adoption has democratized photography for mass consumers. Since the first known photograph was made in 1820, camera functions evolved significantly to compensate for human error.
Controlling and modifying light is a lot of what photographing with studio lights and battery-powered strobes is about. Especially when it comes to portraits, I like to work with my lighting setups so they add something that is not perfect or flat.
Instant photos are magical. They develop before your eyes. You can share them, gift them, spill water on them, draw on them. The only problem is that most instant cameras are pretty cheap — that’s why I’ve always wanted to hack my medium format camera to take instant photos with shallow depth of field and sharpness.
I always put a lens hood on my lenses. Except… when they fall! As I recently finished shooting at 6 AM in the Maldives with my wife, I kicked my tripod with my Sony a7R III, Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM, and an ND-8 filter on it. The tripod fell over towards the ocean and, to my partial relief, fell on the wooden platform 7 feet (2m) below with the camera on it…
Amateur photographer Guy Sie of The Netherlands needed a better way of remembering what film speed he has loaded into his camera, so he created custom 3D-printed camera hot shoe covers with ISO numbers on them.
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.
Can't wait to get your hands on the new Nikon Z Series full frame mirrorless camera? If you'd like to get a feel for the camera's size first, you can now fold yourself a paper version of the Nikon Z7 and Z 24-70mm lens.
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.
Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami had a broken vintage Chinese Seagull TLR camera on his hands, and he recently decided to get creative with it by turning the lens into a working wristwatch-style camera.
Can't wait for Nikon and Canon to launch their new mirrorless cameras and want to fork over money for the ones already on the market? Photographer Eric Rossi made this 4-minute video that shows how you can convert your existing DSLR camera into a mirrorless camera.
While some tinkers are building automated at-home solutions for film processing such as the Developist and Filmomat, Mexican photographer Pablo Zárate has created a much simpler processing aid: the Develophead. It's a film development tank cap that does agitation for you.
Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami has been studying and tinkering with lenses for years, and a few years ago he made a discovery: by reversing one of the elements in a vintage lens, he found himself with a lens that produced beautiful and unusual "magic" bokeh.
The Standard 4x5 is a new 3D printed large format camera that's perfect for aspiring large format photographers on a budget: the camera comes as an IKEA-style assemble-it-yourself kit that costs just $320.
A truly mass-market (and widely adopted) at-home automatic film processing machine has yet to appear in the world of photography. Photographer Mark Webb didn't want to wait around for one to show up, so he cobbled together one with his hardware and software knowledge. It's called the Developist.
How accurately do you expect your camera to be in representing the real world? If your answer is "not very," then Draw This is an instant camera designed for you. It snaps pictures and prints them as cartoon drawings.
The Think Tank Logistics Manager 30 is my absolute favorite when it comes to all the camera bags, tripods, photo bags, and other bags I own for my flash equipment, tripod, and cameras. But, like almost all rolling bags, it's mostly made for being taken indoors at airports, offices or other places with flat floors.
When low-quality photos or videos are posted online, people often say that they were shot with a "potato camera." But if you actually want to shoot photos with a literal potato camera, how would you go about doing so?
Dora Goodman, a maker of handcrafted cameras and straps, has released a new open source camera called the Goodman One that anyone can make if they have access to a 3D printer.
Photographer Mathieu Stern loves experimenting with very old and/or strange camera lenses, but his latest project is quite strange, even by his standards. He used a 3D printer and created a lens that looks like a giant eyeball.
The Carl Zeiss Kipronar 120mm f/1.9 is a vintage cinema projector lens that was designed to beam images rather than capture photos, but you can mount it to modern cameras using adapters. Photographer Mathieu Stern created a homemade adapter after buying the lens for $70 and has been delighted by the "insane swirly bokeh" that the lens produces.
My name is Gerald Gattringer, and I'm a photographer based in Austria. I recently built myself a custom star tracker for DSLRs, and it works pretty well! In this article, I'll share how I did it.
After watching the spread of the selfie stick over the past several years, photographer Peter McKinnon recently decided to try one himself for the first time. But then he decided he wanted something better... so he built himself a $10,000 ultra-Canadian selfie stick.
Polaroid cameras are fun to use, but shooting high numbers of instant photos can get very expensive very quickly. Tim Alex Jacobs, known as mitxela online, recently solved this problem by modifying a standard Polaroid camera into an instant camera that prints photos on thermal paper (the kind used for receipts).
Here's a tutorial on how you can shoot Polaroid i-Type instant film in an old Polaroid 600 instant camera. I think the pictures speak for themselves
Photographer Lucus Landers has built one of the most impressive do-it-yourself cameras we've ever seen. Called the Landers AL6, it's an all-aluminum camera that shoots medium format film.
I really enjoyed reading the Photography: The Definitive Visual History and it got me thinking about blending older forms of photography with newer digital equipment. I became obsessed with TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) cameras -- not for their ability to view through one lens while capturing an image through the other, but for the style of photography that this type of camera forces the photographer to adopt.
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.
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.
Want a remote motion-activated wildlife camera without shelling out big bucks? You can build one yourself using Raspberry Pi. PiBat recently built a pint-sized one, and it works quite well.
If you're looking to add a creative touch to your photos, you can consider making a DIY lens filter for custom effects. Here's a 3-minute video from COOPH that suggests 8 photo filters that you can make at home to spice up your photos in seconds.
Have a camera body cap lying around collecting dust? Did you know that you can easily turn it into a do-it-yourself pinhole lens? Matt from Blue Mantle Films created this 1.5-minute video tutorial that shows how.