DIYPhotography.net

Now, here is a question, what do you do with all your seamless backdrops while they are not in use?

Store them of course. Savage has a nice sponge system for storing backdrops, the right way - standing up.

Why do you want to store them standing up? Because if you store seamless paper lying down you will get rippled paper. The weight of the paper sets on the bottom part of the paper and presses it against the floor. While this does not crease the paper, it reshapes it into an oval, and when rolled out it will show ripples. not that good.

So, how about that Savage system again? Well, to store a seamless upright, you'll need a wall as high at least as the length of the paper - 3 meters. While this is not rare in studios it is kinda rare in home studios. Click to continue ›

London based photographer Edward Horsford photographs balloons in a very unique way. He freezes them as the leave his hands to explode.

The pictures are taken with a "high tech" DIYed sound trigger, Strobes, and one rusty stick.

The following post which bounces from interview to tech details outlines the way to take such photographs. Click to continue ›

They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. How will you go on lighting a shot when you have no strobes, no lightstands and no modifiers?

With fluorescents of course. waintaminute! Fluorescents? Aren't those the things that make green harsh hideous light? Well depends. Netherlands photographer Ragoem Vakfotografie shows just what can be done with just a couple of those lengthy lights.

First thing first, you need to understand light a bit to work with light sabers like this. Light is harsh when it is far (and looks small) and softer when it is close (and looks big). So fluorescents had t be placed close to the model. Placed? Try hand held. Click to continue ›

The following detailed (but not too lengthy) tutorial that shows how to make 3D red and blue images was written by David Cooper.

Those 3D images look great when viewed with 3D glasses, especially when mixing that with the sliced floating fruit technique, such as the ones on this post. Click to continue ›

Part time photographer (and full time DB architect) Josh Grant, was able to shot an entire like the old schoolers, with a pinhole camera. In this post Josh shares how he made the pinhole camera (from a Canon 7D) and filmed the movie. josh picked the perfect subject too - a locomotive to match feeling with technology!

I've wanted to make a pinhole lens for years now, but I finally got off my duff and did it after reading Matt Devlin's fine tin can digital pinhole tutorial. Click to continue ›

Reader Marco Jetti shared a really cool project on DIYP's flickr pool. It is an Intervalometer project call LIM (Less Is More). Intervalometer is the thingy that allows you to take a picture every X seconds. And it is made with very basic electronics. It fits in a small liquorish box (which I guess is the Italian equivalent of Altoids).

Here is the cool thing. Marco added a very detailed diagram of the circuit as well as simulation and building steps. (This is very cool, Marco did just the same with his 5 km camera trigger) Click to continue ›

The following post about 3 ways to DIY your Chroma Key was made by Ben Eadie of DVRebelGear.com.

There are several ways to get a decent chroma background for a photo for the DIYer and the results are just as good as any pro system I have encountered. We will cover 3 solutions I have used with great success and all cost less than $15. You can use a green sheet, you can paint a wall and you can make a pop out chroma key like a pop out reflector. I use green for my key but you can also use blue if you choose. Click to continue ›

Photographer Steven Monteau, the guy behind the Battlefield Pinhole camera, decided to take a stab at the Shaped Bokeh thing.

As everything with Steven, it is a combination of Art, science and Magic. Steven explored the effect of using different apertures on the final shaped bokeh effect, and did this in quite a unique way. Click to continue ›

UPDATE: Looks like Kurbster droped out of flickr taking the very excellent set of strobist studio with him. I am going to leave the post here as the text still has value, although the images were soooooo much better to understand the concept from.

Just spent some good amount of time over at Kurbster photo stream. Seems like he completely nailed the whole, turn-a-room-into-a-strobist-studio thing.

Kurbster challenged Home Depot classic departments and generously turned some cheap and ordinary items into studio elements.

I'm gonna go over some of the challenges that Kurbster so elegantly solved.

Multi flash mounts are cool. I have discussed them before when we did a DIY on a dual flash mount. Just a quick recap: Using multiple flashed allows you to either drive more light or to remain on the same light level, while recycling faster. You can read it all here.

Using some objects that my wife will call junk elements smartly scattered around the house, photographer Brent Pennington made a three-way flash mount. Ha! Three is better than two. It will drive a stop and a half more.

As a bonus, Brent's device relives you of the need to use a stud on your swivel. That's a major bonus if you are like me and keep losing them. Kudos.

Of course, you could always sin and get the one made by Lastolite, but then where would all the fun (and your 70 greens) would be?

Read the entire tutorial and deep thoughts on Brent's Blog. Click to continue ›