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.

How I Made a DIY Gobo Holder for Studio Strobes

I wanted a device that can throw light patterns onto a wall or a model. There are some commercially available but they are quite expensive and I this was only for occasional use. I thought that this is something that can be 3D printed.

How to Build a Wall-Mounted Battery Charging Station on the Cheap

Photographer and YouTuber Duncan Dimanche has posted a quick tutorial that'll show you how to create your own DIY wall charging station on the cheap. Depending on your needs this setup can cost as little as $60, and the results look almost as good and functional as some of the more serious builds we've featured.

Making a Custom Raspberry Pi Camera with Zero Coding Knowledge

The Verge Video Director Becca Farsace recently set out to build her very own custom camera by merging a point-and-shoot film camera with the new Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera module and a Raspberry Pi 4 computer. Just one problem... she has zero coding knowledge. Cue a very frustrating week.

This Guy Used a Cheap RC Car to Build a DIY Cable Cam

Creator Kasper from the YouTube channel MAKESOME recently set himself a challenge. After a request from his friend and photographer Mick Friis, he decided to try and create a cable cam on the cheap—basically turning an RC car into something like a Wiral LITE, or a smaller version of the Syrp slingshot.

Capture Creative Splash Photography with this Simple DIY ‘Catapult’

Matt Huber over at YouTube channel The Garage Learning has put together a fun and creative walkthrough that takes a different approach to splash photography. Instead of manually throwing water onto his subject, he designed a simple 'DIY catapult' that does the job much better than he can.

Photographer Uses DIY Reflecting Pool to Capture Beautiful Flower Photos

Landscape photographer Lewis Carlyle was recently trying to figure out a photo project to do at home, when he came up with a totally unique, never-before-tried idea: close-up photos of flowers. Okay, fine, it's not exactly revolutionary, but he did manage to put an interesting twist on the concept and create some beautiful images in the process.

You Can Grow Plants in Used Film Canisters

Houseplants and film photography have both seen renewed interest among younger people in recent years. Here's a neat way to combine these two loves: you can recycle used film canisters by turning them into tiny pots for plants.

How to Make a Portable DIY Camera Battery Charging Board

The filmmakers over at Threefold have created a DIY battery charging board with a very useful twist: it's portable. And in the video above, they break down exactly how you can build your own version to suit your on-the-go creative needs.

How I Shoot Solargraphs with a Digital Camera

Solargraphies (pinhole images on photographic paper that capture months of the sun arching across the horizon) were a thing starting sometime in the 2000s. When this caught on broadly in the early 2010s, it got a lot of people excited for film again.

This Photographer Made a Working Camera Lens Out of LEGO

Weird lens enthusiast and YouTuber Mathieu Stern has created another fun stay-at-home DIY lens while stuck in quarantine. This time it's a functional camera lens, complete with focusing mechanism, made almost entirely out of LEGO bricks.

SCURA is a Curved Panoramic Pinhole Camera You Can Make at Home

Dora Goodman—maker of gorgeous hand-crafted custom cameras like these—is back with another 3D-printed, open-source camera that you can make at home. It's called the SCURA, and it's a curved pinhole camera that shoots 60x25mm panoramic images on regular 35mm film.

Building an Afghan 8×10 Box Camera for $100

My name is Antoine Loncle, and I'm an independent photographer. I shared my homemade 8x10 box camera on several photography groups and it received a lot of interest. I figured I'd do a little write up for anyone that wanted to know more about the camera as well as see some images of the building process.

Cyclorama: How to Build Your Own Professional ‘Infinity Studio’

The folks over at Syrp have just released plans for one of the most intense, involved, but potentially rewarding DIY projects you could possibly embark on: building your own professional photo studio with no corners, giving the impression of an infinite background—AKA: a cyclorama.

How to Build a DIY ‘Pixelstick’ for About $22

You might have heard of the Pixelstick. “Nothing compares” is one of their tag lines. And this is true... at least price-wise. I have always wanted one to at least try out some light painting with it, but the Pixelstick retails for €400 here in Germany and $349 in the United States.

Nine DIY Filmmaking and Photography Hacks Using Cardboard

YouTuber Jordy of Cinecom.net recently put together a list of DIY filmmaking and photography hacks that are proving to be quite popular. In just under 7 minutes, he covers 9 hacks, all of which use cardboard to make the magic happen.

How I Built a Custom Charging Board for All of My Camera Batteries

Recently I became—as I’m sure many of you already are—utterly sick of the endless chargers and cables in my studio. It's a mess of wires that always seem to get tangled and it always ends up looking like Medusa on a bad hair day.

Creating Homemade Photography Backdrops on the Cheap

Anyone who has had any exposure to still life photography or studio work will know just how expensive backdrops can be. I have a couple from Kate Backdrops company, one of which I use very often, but I've been hankering after a few more.