DIYPhotography.net Photography and Studio Lighting

A PJ book? Are we talking about a new Pajamas book? A rising Photo Journalist?

Our friends over at Photojojo lunched the Photojojo book. It is a book loaded with great projects for the DIY addict.

For a long time now, I've been reading the PJ newsletter. It is a great source to get project inspiration and  some great ideas to lay with once you are sitting at home wondering what to do with all those great pictures you took.

OK, I know what you're thinking. This post is probably gonna be about hacking used lens to a matchbox pinhole camera using some chewing gum.

Well it is even better (and simpler) than that (and it's about creativity more than about DIY). The best camera is simply the camera that you carry around with you. And since it looks like iPhone sales are close to hitting 6 billion units, odd are that your best camera is an iPhone.
This and the fact that Chase says so.

High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR) is a creative technique in which you combine 3, 5 or 7 images shot at different exposures, which are then merged into a single image.

The advantages are far more detail, vibrant color and control of lighting than you could ever achieve by manipulating a single JPG or RAW image in Photoshop.

In the following post Gavin Phillips will cover some of the main (yet often overlooked) aspects of HDR Photography.

(Roll your mouse over any of the images and linger for a second to see how it looked like before HDRing it).

UPDATE: Pat Joyce jest released a complete set of instructions for this mod.

It happened to all of us. At one point or another our beloved glass falls on the floor and dies. (Yes, by glass I mean lens - we're trying some hard photo talk here on DIYP).

If you had a UV or Haze filter on the lens glass, you may have protected it from any minor damage. If you tried some camera tossing and missed, you'd better collect your insurance money. Or waitaminute. As Miracle Max would say the lens may only be mostly dead.

Pat Joyce came up with a neat way to convert that broken glass into a fisheye lens (ok, ok, you can buy one if you don't want to hack it).

How about creating a thingy that is a bounce card, a softbox and a super bounce card. Nice isn't it?

Martin Kimeldorf is a regular inventor here on DIYP (with inventions like Portable Backdrop Mount System, the Kimel Bouncer and the dual vertex gel system he is one of the more prolific mind I know). I was not surprised when he came up with a design to the problem presented above. It is a bit rugged and DIY looking, but it does the job. It's also a great project to get inspiration from, both on what you can do with a flash and how you can do it.

Its all Martin from after the jump.

Panning is a photographic technique that provides great separation of subject from background.

The technique is very simple in theory, but takes some practice to perfect.

Here is how it works, you set your camera to a relatively low shutter speed.  Say 1/80 or 1/40 of a second. Next you find a subject that is moving from one side of the frame to the other. Here comes the tricky part. While keeping the subject in a fixed part of the frame (and you do that by panning the lens from side to side) click the shutter.

If you did every thing correctly, you'll end up with a sharp subject and blurred background. This technique takes a lot of practice with the following focus:

1. Finding the exact correct moment to click the shutter is not always trivial.
2. You'll need to avoid any vertical movement - this will create blur in the subject as well. 
3.  You'll have to be in precise sync with the moving speed of your subject, to keep it sharp while blurring the background.

This is why DIYP labs developed several techniques to get panning pictures without ever moving your camera.

About a month ago I asked DIYP readers what were your favorite books? A month (and a new home) later I am sharing this list with you.

It is not surprising that the list features both great classic books as well as some new one and some great hidden gems. Thanks for all the readers that participated and took the time to share their thoughts.

The number of books out there can be stunning, so it may be interesting to see what other photographers think about some of the books out there, and get a direction. 

I picked up 10 of those books and reviews that I felt gave a good reason to go out and buy a book:

Time Lapse movies are really cool. Really. I got a nice shot of creating a time lapse movie when I moved to a new place. Here is how I did it.

WARNING: This is going to be a geeky post with lots of software downloads, hacks, and tweaks.

WARNING 2: Once you time-lapse, you can never go back (only fast forward).

UPDATE: the G10 is still not ported to CHDK. So, until the G10 has CHDK support, use an older canon camera.

OK, somehow something went very wrong, and I still don't have a decent internet connection. Thank you coffee lord for providing free internet (and lots and lots of coffee). On today's speedlinks lots of gel holders, light painting, some great projects and as always lots of hacks and DIY mods to the photography addict.

The following post is a guest post from James Evins- an automotive photographer from Houston. 

Hi! My name is James Evins, and I am going to talk to you guys (and girls) about a nifty way to build your own automotive rig! Who doesn't love rig shots? The sense of motion achieved and the interesting angles that would be nearly impossible in a car to car or panning shot make automotive rigs an invaluable tool to automotive photographers.