DIYPhotography.net

I've got a very happy announcement today. DIYP is releasing its first eBook - Home Studio Photography: Your Complete Guide To Building A Photography Studio At Home.

It's a long name, I know, yet it grasps the essence of the book, providing a full, comprehensive reference book for building a Photography studio at home. You can grab a copy here, or read the details after the jump. Click to continue ›

DigitalRevTV is my kind of youtube channel.One of their latest features is an easy IKEA product photography setup shown blow, which actually shows a cheapo still life studio set and an even cheaper solution for 'simple' product photography.

I got in for a quick look and got drifted away. Now two hour of my life will never be returned. They know photography, they don't take themselves too seriously and they are not afraid of nuking - or should I say pinking - cameras, which is a sure recipe for having lots of fun. Click to continue ›

I love strobes, anyone who reads this blog knows it. But more and more I find myself attracted to the lure of continuous light. No pop blinks, no need for modeling light, and pupils are smaller. Kirk Tuck has a post about continuous lights with LEDs. Similar, not as intense but way cheaper solution is using CFL bulbs for lighting.

In the following post photographer Tony Zeh will walk us through building a CFL driven Westcott Spiderlite TD3 Backlight Kit. This backlight is part of his CFL based studio - check the last picture for more info about that. Click to continue ›

Sometimes, a small softbox would not do it. You just need a bigger light. The thing is that bigger modifiers eat more light up. This a guest post by Edward Peters will show how he dealt with building a large softbox, including building a double flash bracket, mounting two strobes and syncing a pop for up to five strobes using a headphone splitter.

My Wife needed photos of a jewelry piece she had created, but the piece was too big for my favorite 13x13 inch DIY speedlite soft box.

Unfortunately for us, the jewelry has entered a contest and cannot be displayed on the web. However, the good news are that I can share the making of the mega-dual-light softbox that took the image. Click to continue ›

In this tutorial I will explain how I built the softbox used to take the image on the left. It is a 40cm X 40cm foamboard softbox that accepts a strobe. Kinda similar in size and effect to the Photoflex LiteDome XS which I use a lot out of the studio.

On the left image this softbox was used as key, see this lighting setup for another use of the softbox as fill.

It is a simple softbox to make and it takes about half an hour if you have mediocre cutting skills. Click to continue ›

The cardboard light tent is a constantly popular post here at DIYP, and no wonder it is one of the easiest ways for shoot a small product [note to self, make a really huge cardboard tent].

However, it is not the only way to create good small scale product setups. A while back David Hobby had a great derivative of that box which he titled the lunch box.

Photographer Steve Bennett uses a similar concept to create a table top sized diffusion screen with built in spill control. Click to continue ›

I am involved with a large project that needs photographs for their step-by-step instructions manual. The same regular lighting and placement challenges are there, but there is a new challenge for this kinda shot and it is where to place the camera.

The images need to be taken from atop, creating flat drawing like images. For small stuff (around book size), you can just stand over the thing legs spread and shoot from eye level pointing down, provided that you can level the camera. For bigger things, though, you need to go higher. Way higher.

Here is how I tackle it. Click to continue ›

If your photography workflow includes using Lightroom, you may wanna take a close look at Paddy For Lightroom an open source DIYish method of assigning keys to Lightroom actions and sliders.(We featured a similar concept before for GIMP, however this one is way, way more flexible)

The neat thing about Paddy for Lightroom is that it can be connected to almost any external input device including "standard" Genovation keyboards, external cashier keyboards, Midi controllers, well you name it. This means that you can map keys to do your some of your tedious work for you. Click to continue ›

If you've been following some of the video tutorials we've had here at DIYP, you probably noticed the skateboard dolly that was featured here a few weeks back.

Photographer and videographer Martin Taylor shows us how to build a much fancier dolly which is partially based on a skateboard. This dolly however, is smaller (will fit on table), has a head mount that can support an SLR and can be set to move in circles. It's all Martin from here. Click to continue ›

Photographer David Martinez thought that $110 is a bit too much for a magic arm. He came up with his own version for half the price. It's all David from here.

Over the years I have found a few broken clubs laying near tee boxes on golf courses. Graphite shafts are usually very stiff and I always thought they might be repurposed. So I have collected a few of them. Well it just happened that I was in thinking about buying a Magic Arm recently. A friend had one and it was pretty sweet but the price was kinda crazy. Click to continue ›