DIYPhotography.net

Flickr user Maciej Pietuszynski (blog) had a great shower when the idea of combining a shower head, a rubber glove and an old nifty fifty into a unique tilt shift lens.

Loving the idea of free lensing, yet hating the idea of the lens accidentally crashing into the ground, Maciej came up with a clever concept of utilizing a shower head for its smoothness.

The Nifty fifty has undergone surgery to separate the bionet from the lens and install an advanced tilt-shift mechanism in the form of a shower head held in place with a heavy duty rubber glove. Hit the jump for the full pictorial. Click to continue ›

With Valentines evening fast approaching I thought I would do a small shameless plug for the bokeh masters kit and showcase 5 romantic pictures taken with the device and the hearts filter.

Of course, if you are more of the romantican and wanna make a romantic hearts bokeh yourself, you can follow the instructions here.

Untitled by Liana Garcia Joyce

Click to continue ›

Carbon Fiber is the new Titanium! All the good stuff is made with carbon fiber, the nice tripods, the nice monopods, the nice rigs and the nice stabilizers. With all those carbon fibers accessories, your lens is must be feeling left out.

Fear not, this guide by Laya Gerlock will show you how to spoil your lens with a Carbon-Fiber hood in 5 easy steps. (OK, it's a decal, still is pretty awesome)

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Having lost his Nikon 10.5mm lens cap, photographer Stu Carlson used the bottom end of a Dr. pepper bottle to cap his lens.

"The lens cap disappeared and I hate to have my lens unprotected.  So I cut off the end of a Dr. Pepper bottle to use till I could order the right lens cap for it.  Quite by accident I had picked a perfect fit for this lens and since a replacement cap is not cheap and this is and it works and fits so well, I have not bothered to order the replacement cap.

While the bottle seems to provide some nice protection, I doubt that the 10.5mm tastes as good as the original content of the bottle. Click to continue ›

Elizabeth Giorgi of Being Geek Chic (God, I love this name) shares a great little tutorial that shows you how to make a fashionable camera wrist strap. The kind that is kinda like lanyard that keep cameras from finding their way to the cement pavement.

The stitching job is really easy and if you ever wanted to get into sewing (come'on I know you do) this is a great starters project, that will ease you in to the world of doubles, zig-zags and overlocks. (And you win a wonderful strap in the process). Hit the jump for a full movie tutorial. Click to continue ›

Memory cards have their speed rating systems. For example, class 6 is the recommended base class for 1080p HD video coming from DSLRs. Those classes however, don't tell you what is the burst rate on individual shots. Mostly because each image has a different MB size to it depending on many factors.

Jaroslav over at Crazy Lab found an interesting way of measuring the burst rate and comparing different factors that affect the camera to card writing speed. TO make the test constant he covered the lens of his Canon T3i and took pictures of darkness. By recording the shutter sound (or music as some call it) and displaying the waveform in Audacity Jaroslav was able to compare burst-rates of different ISOs, capturing modes and cards. Click to continue ›

A while back I bought my daughter a Vtech Kidizoom, trying to hook her up on photography. Looking back at the experience, I can say that she is doing pretty well.

On the bright side, she enjoys taking pictures and does a darn fine job too. Of course, being able to come down to daddy's studio with flashes set up does not hurt her fun one bit.

On the "dark" side, the image quality sucks! We thought we could handle it and that the grainy look would be "fun" and "Lomo"y, but even she is a bit annoyed with the noise of the photographs when viewed large.

I came across this video that shows how you can impact-proof a camera using moldable plastic called Sugru. It's kinda like plasticine, only it hardens as rubber, and can take quite an impact. Not sure why they used an ancient Sony Cybershot for the video, but even that old camera will get better results than your standard "kids" cam.

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Chad Bredahl just sent in this smart tip about using a seat belt pad as a deadcat. (Deadcats protect microphones from wind, so if you are shooting video outdoors, it kills a lot of the wind noise).

Deadcats are not that expensive to begin with, but I guess auto part shops are easier to find if you are on a hurry and need a quick solution.

If you think this is crap, skip to 2:10 to see/hear the effect of the pad on wind noise, I was surprised on how nicely it works.

Thanks for the tip, Chad. Click to continue ›

After last month's notice about Nikon firmware getting decrypted by Simeon Pilgrim and Vitaliy Kiselev, I thought we may see a nice NHDK (kinda like CHDK, but colored yellow). Click to continue ›

Compressed air cannons are lots of fun for launching paper rockets. Turns out they are also pretty useful for indie films. What? Why would an indie film director want to launch a paper rocket? Actually, the compressed air can be used to throw a small pile of debris, creating a small "explosion" for an action sequence.

The awesome guys over at Realm Pictures came up with a great film that shows the entire setup for creating such an explosion, including the mentioned cannon.

They are also trying to fund their ambitions underwater indie film via kick starters, and share the plans for this cannon and a bunch of other cool film DIYs with backers (including the waterproof LED strip light we featured a while back), so give them a call on their Kickstarters page.

Thanks for the tip Rich Click to continue ›