DIYPhotography.net

A few days back we posted a video by The Underwater Realm that shows how to build and use an air cannon to create a false explosion.

It turns out that that though the folks at Realms are super busy making an Indie film, they manage to find the time to tip the indie film community (and photographers in general) with some awesome tips (see their undestructible LED strip for example).

This time around Eve Hazelton shares a great tutorial on how to use household lights to create some awesome lighting either for the big screen or for stills.

Click to continue ›

J. P. Morgan and the team over at The Slanted Lens created a little finger-cutting-snow-dropping clip that teaches how to add artificial snow to your movies and stills.

It is another semi-carpentry, semi-lighting lesson packed with useful info. (And an obvious follow up to J. P. Morgan's Making It Rain tutorial.

You can see previous features of J. P. Morgan here.

Creating Falling Snow via The Slanted Lens Click to continue ›

One of the things I remember most from my visit to new york city is the tour I took around Chinatown. Specifically I remember sitting in one of the local places ordering food which I did not know the name of nor its ingredients.

It was some kind of soup and it was delicious. Till this very day I am not sure what was that floating eyeball but I enjoyed it very much.

A short walk after my wife and i (really it was just my wife) bought a whole set of china dishes. This was the part where I dosed off. If I had seen the DIY video below I may have been more interested, as it shows how to build a beauty dish with stuff you find in Chinatown and an Lastolite Ezybox bracket (for mounting).

I wonder if someone would pick up the glove and add this BD to the DIY beauty dish stand off.

The Chinatown Special: The Best DIY Beauty Dish via slrlounge Click to continue ›

Hey guys, this is Von Wong, Montreal Based Conceptual Photographer. I recently did a Tango themed photoshoot around the Old Port here in Montreal. Udi thought it would be interesting to provide a little more detail than in the actual Behind the Scenes video developing a little more into specific shots, lighting techniques and the dynamics of doing an unplanned photoshoot with a small team so…hope you guys enjoy!

Final images and a BTS breakdown by Ben after the jump Click to continue ›

Photographer Allen Mowery made a (yet another) simple Lightsphere from some stuff he found around the house (Velcro and bubble wrap vinyl drawer liner). As the comparison above shows, the results are as good as the original thing. The oh-so-simple how to video after the jump. Click to continue ›

We've had our share of Lightsphere and Omnibounce DIYs, ranging from wax paper and  yogurt cups through bubble wrap and barf bags.

I think this one by Flickr user Manu_MK is one of the simpler ideas. A plastic cap with two gaffer flaps gaffed to the strobe.

Click to continue ›

When you take a portrait today you are probably using a flash or a small strobe. But what would you do if you took that portrait 150 years ago? You would probably use flash powder.

It's a nice toy for all the fire loving togs out there that are not really concerned about burning their back yard (or eyebrows). If you take away the fact that you can not actually get a nice batch today (well, at least without having the fed go down on you) I am still not sure you'd wanna use that. It is highly flammable, totally uncontrollable and give out a nice puff of smoke. (And way slower than any modern strobe)

Maurice Ribble of TPB, did a little comparison to see how flash powder compares with a 580 EXII. results are surprising.

[Flash Powder Photography on TBP] Click to continue ›

When talking about strobes we usually go for power, one of the first things we ask is what is the GN on the little guy, or how many WS on the big bro. That is usually the questions when you want to light more.

But what if you want to light fast? what if you are trying to freeze the action. A water drop crown or a popping balloon a good example of something slow that you want to freeze, and a bullet will be an example of something fast that you want to stop in mid air.

Strobist has a great theoretical discussion about two relevant time indicators: T0.5 and T1.0. In a nutshell, T.5 is the time it takes your flash to output half of the light, and T1.0 is the time it takes your flash to output 90% of the light.

The lower the power is, the faster the pop should be. Click to continue ›

One of the things we are trying to deal here on DIYP is making ring lights without going into all the mess and (possible) danger that goes into wiring and sawing. Till now, we've were only half there with some IKEA based rigs that provided some nice bulb support, but we never made it all the way through to a really each hack.

Videographer Joel Loukus came up with the missing link. By using multiple Christmas lights around a wire frame he built The WreathLight. A Christmas Lights based ring light. (Dont miss out on the chi-ching sound, it really makes the light quality that much better). Click to continue ›

If you're an avid Strobist, you know that the Strobist community is all about off-camera flash. In fact your submitted images can be removed from the pool if you use an on camera flash (there are exceptions to anything, of course, but as a general thumb rule this is how it goes).

The only exception allowed is "FWIW, on-camera flash is fine if it is used to trigger other off-camera flashes", I assume that this exception was set in place for those who can not afford wireless triggers or only have one slave flash with an optical sensor.

This thing is that triggering a slave with an on board flash may impact the lighting of an image. even if you set the master to its lowest output three is some light coming from that flash.

Now, it is it fill you are after, this may actually be a conscious decision, but if you want no flash at all coming from on camera, there is a simple hack to make only optical sensors magically see the master's light burst. I call it The Dark Master. buehahahahahahHAHAHAHA! Click to continue ›