DIYPhotography.net

This guest post was written by Leann Wrightsman, a photo DIY-er extraordinaire. This snoot making article has one of the best effort to result ratio. You usually use a snoot when you want only a small part of a scenario lighten, while keeping the rest of the scenario light free see the picture at the end of this article.

In this article Leann Wrightsman will show you how to make a "Snoot" for your speedlight flash with easy to find items you may even have around the house! Click to continue ›

One of the challenging lighting setups that I have encountered deals with setting up a lighting environment in small spaces. Spaces like working dens, children rooms and offices. Those places are sometimes dark and not well lit. The solution for this problem is simple - use flashes. One or two hot shoe flashes can easily give you the light you need. For creativity sake, you would like to take those flashes off camera like one of my favorite sites suggests. So where will you place those flashes? Obviously, you can not use a lighting stand - there is hardly any place for you, let alone your big lighting stands.

So what would you have in abundance in a working den? Let's see.... If you've ever been in a lawyer office, you can't escape the answer - they have books. Shelves and shelves of books. Do they actually read them? I don't know. Can you, as a photographer use them? Heck yes!

In the following article, I will show you how to create a simple, fast to build, cool looking lighting stand from a plaster spatula and some books.

The first thing you will need is a plaster spatula, those come in really cheap. You can get a metal one or a plastic on, and there is no need to buy the high end spatulas, just buy the crummiest, cheapest, made in Taiwan most suitable spatula you can find.

You will also need an umbrella holder (AKA swivel). Or if you don't have one a long 1/4" bolt and nut. In general 1/4" bolts are something usful to have around the house. Click to continue ›

Step right up, young man, my lady. Come photographers - You are about to see some card magic that will leave you amazed. This very special card magic was thought to me by the Harry Potter himself ancient wizards of Tibet, passed on from generation to generation (from when flash photography was invented). You may say it is a slight of hands, an illusions of the eye, distraction of the mind. But I tell you NO, my friends this is true magic. It is called "The ACE of Bounce".

Now, does anyone in the audience has a card deck, any card deck will do. Yes sir, step right up. Please tell me where did you by this deck? At your usual K-mart, I see. is there anything special about this very regular Bicycle deck of card? No you say, well let us see. Click to continue ›

A softbox is a studio thingy that professional photographers use on their studios. Why? for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, softboxes create a smoother light - less hotspots (yea - those are the bright, burnt our noses in your photos), anther is smoother shadows. Most professional models are shot with softboxes to get that glamorous, look. Softboxes are also great for macro shots - they produce even diffused light.

The only trouble starts when you head down the road to the store and want to get one of them nice wonders. They usually cost something like a small county side house. In this article I will demonstrate how to build a homemade studio softbox for just a few $$. Click to continue ›

Pedro G. Dias came up with a way to make one sturdy light box. This article will tell the Story of The Making of the Lightbox.

So This item is all about how information traverses the web, and how by mere coincidence, Pedro got to know about this light box from a fried who got it from a web site, and hoe finally I got the mail that tells me to post the story... here is how it goes:

I've been drooling for a lightbox for a long time now, especially with winter coming, and sun going hide&seek up here in Norway. A good friend of mine recommended a website where a very nice guy had made a project out of it, so I thought I'd try it out for myself, and here are some of the highlights of that feat. A big cheers to the author of this page for letting me know how easy this is to do. The concept and cudos for this goes to him. Click to continue ›

In my bouncing flash article I mentioned something called Omni-Bounce. The Omni-Bounce is a Stofen product that enables you to better diffuse your flash.

Now, what exactly does it mean - better diffuse your flash? Well, when you use a flash attached to the hot shoe you basically have two choices, direct flash and bounced flash. Direct means that your flash is aimed directly at your subject, and bounced means that the flash is directed at a surface other then your subject (say a wall), and your subject gets the light that "bounces" off that surface.

What happens if you need both? This is why the guys at Stofen came up with the Omni-Bounce (or omnibounce). it is build in a way that throws some of the light upwards and some of the light sideways (well, so does a Nylon bag ...). But if you need to go portable, a bag can hardly be a solution. The omnibounce is also very popular with party photographers. Click to continue ›

Tim Boesenkool has sent this awesome idea on how you can make a DIY backdrop stand that reaches all the way to the ceiling, without getting in a fight with your wife.

I have two sturdy light stands but with the work I'm doing it isn't really enough, and I'm tired of propping reflectors on wobbly chairs etc. Because I don't have excess room I needed something with a small footprint as well.

So cruising around the hardware store I discovered a great cheap, no assembly required solution and I have two stands for under 50 bucks. Click to continue ›

So, I was trying to make a nice lighting for a still life picture I was taking. Sadly, I had none of my usual crap around. I was at lost. Suddenly, I heard a distant voice, telling me to to try something I've never done before and to try some new cheap way to take the picture, also to try and keep it innovative, and low cost (shuold be read "I have no money for gear, so I cant afford the stuff I really want).

This is the time to take a short break, and talk about that distant voice. It is not uncommon for me to hear voices in my head - nothing big, no one has ever told me to climb a water tower and go postal. yet... It's just your usual voices - "you can snooze for 5 more minutes, the meeting will be delayed anyway"; "let Liry (my daughter) have another chocolate bar, mommy wont care"; you know, the usual things.... lately I've been hearing a new voice. In fact this voice is so load that it even dumps some of the older voices that tells me to buy more stuff to complete my poor photo gear collection. Click to continue ›

This Article will demonstrate how to build a Lightbox. A Lightbox is something you can use to distribute light when photographing a small object. This is a common solution for studio photography. it is similar to the origami studio, only this time your light source is inside the box. Click to continue ›

This post on a 2 cents macro studio got me thinking. Firstly because it is a great idea, it employs the same technique as the super simple light tent and the flash diffuser. Secondly it is cheap. So cheap in fact, that it really does only cost two cents. The thing that I was thinking is - "I want a BLT Sub", and right after "This is great for small objects, what if I want to shoot something bigger? For this I came up with an improvement - The Origami Macro Studio. It is not as cheap - approximately 20 times more expensive - but for 40 cents, it is still a heck f a deal. And as the macro studio, it is cheap, takes 2 minutes to prepare, and very simple. Click to continue ›