DIYPhotography.net

It looks like this weekend is going to be weekend at the movies for all photography lovers. So sit back, and enjoy. Now, the trick is get up once the show is over and try some of the things yourself.

After two brilliant videos from Jim Talkington dealing with studio lighting on a budget, comes something completely different.

Photographer and DIYer Guy Montag came up with a nice and easy I-have-no-idea-about-electronics way to make high speed photography shots.

More chat and the video tutorial after the jump.

Click to continue ›

Why spend a fortune on an on-camera softscreen diffuser? (OK, 9 dollars are hardly a fortune, yet...). This guest post by Huy Hoang shows you how to build one for just a few cents. (Mental note: make a DIY manual on how to reduce the cost of a Nikon D2X by the same ratio). Huy is a member of DIYPhotography.net's instructibles group - check it out. The idea is similar to the one explained on the speed light mounted softbox article, but takes half the time and can be used on a built in flash.

Hold on!! Why would you want a softscreen in the first place? I can think of two reasons: number one - the build in flash is soooooo small, it is a very hard light source. And 2 - it can not be bounced. However - you can get more out of it. Just to get your appetite going, here is what you'll get when you are done Click to continue ›

The following guest post was made by Rolf Randby, a fellow DIY-er, who has two right hands (this is yet another manifestation of Darwin's Evolution - The survivor of the guys who make stuff instead of buying them). The problem which Rolf was facing, is how to build a hot shoe mount for a flash trigger he made. Instead of running to the nearest photo store, he came up with a pretty cheap nice solution, that involves taking a part an old camera. This is also a good solution if your flash does not have a pc-sync outlet, as many of the commercial radio triggers use a phone jack to send the signal to the flash.

So to start this project of you will need an old camera that has a hot-shoe mount. Those are available at a lot of junk stores for a dollar or so. This camera is going to be disassembled - faint of heart - beware! Click to continue ›

How to take good panoramas? Sounds simple, right? Take some shots with some overlapping landscape, go to your favorite stitching software, and stitch them up (I like panorama tools AKA PT, and autostich AKA autostich). Right? Not exactly...

If you've done a panorama or two, you must have noticed those annoying vertical stitching lines. Some are caused by wide angle distortion, some due to Polarizer filter that stayed on, and some are the "software's fault". Allot of those annoying stitching lines are caused due to something called parallax. In layman's terms Parallax means that your camera's focal plan does not "sit" (or as Neo would say - is "not in one") with rotations axis of your camera. confused? Here is a great article to explain this. So if you want to get professional panoramas you need to do something about it; This something is called Using the Nodal Point (is it me, or does this term sounds a bit weird). Curious? here is how you find your Nodal Point. Of course DIYPhotography.net is not the first to find this Nodal thing. you can always get some cheap accessories for panorama at Manfrotto. Or you can try and build one yourself, just like Stefan Lindgren - DIY-er extraordiner. 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 ›

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 ›

If you need a better way to hold the light you use while taking pictures with the DIY backdrop you just made, or you need a better way to control where light goes for keying out backgrounds in Photoshop, read through this tutorial on how to make a quick and durable (and highly configurable) lightstand out of one of those old, sort-of broken cheap tripods you have sitting in your closet. Even if it's your main tripod, you should be able to modify it so you can swap it for a lightstand or standard tripod pretty easily. Click to continue ›

When you look at the photographic word, you see a great change, the change from analog to digital. Today most amateur and professional photographers are using digital cameras, but some are still using film. Also Some studio work is still done with slides and film, due to the cost of large digital backs. The following article by Dov Klein sheds some light about the terms used when evaluating film, though most of the terms are relevant for digital sensors. Click to continue ›