DIYPhotography.net

If you've been around from before the digital age, chances are you have stacks and stacks of negatives and slides stuffed in a box somewhere neatly ordered in dedicated archival grade binders.

Those binder (or stuffed boxes) are not the best performers when it comes to finding photographs, making prints and most importantly, they are not back-up friendly.

For those reasons (and more) it is a good idea to scan your old film into digital format. If you shop around there are some pretty good film scanners for about $150, and the Nikon monsters that will set you back a few months rent. Click to continue ›

Here is a nice concept to compete with Kite Arieal Photography, Helicopter rigged cameras and very long pole photography.

A bunch of curious DIYers at Los Angeles rigged an iPhone 4 to a set of helium balloons that helped it rise about 1000 feet and take 720p videos of Los Angeles.

The footage is displayed below, while it is not perfect, and kinda shaky, there is also a valuable BTS. Hit the Just for some behind the scenes and my notes of the video

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Several weeks ago, you may have read my post on this site entitled Build Your Own Lenses in which I extolled the wonders of homemade lenses and the soft, glowy images they produce.

In this post, I'm going to explain how to get that softness under control to produce images with interesting and more subtle soft focus effects, such as the photo on the left. (I'll even show you how homemade lenses can produce crisp, sharp images, if you like that sort of thing.) Click to continue ›

Frenzy over at Instructalbes came up with a neat way to convert your SLR into a Holga.

A Holga is a very popular plastic toy camera that shoots 120 medium format films. It is known for its plastic looks and its amazing ability to provide inconsistent images.

the idea is very much similar to the Altoids pinhole we featured a few days ago. It uses the same mechanism - a body cup with attachment replaces the lens. Only this time Frenzy did not use a pinhole made from Altoids, he used a Holga lens. 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 ›

Finally I got around to making a little change on my GI Radio Slave Transmitter set (those are also known as GI Triggers or Poverty Wizards).

I love the triggers dearly, and while there pop rate is not good enough to play Russian Roulette with, it is good enough for most of my usage.

One thing that has been bothering me for ages is the short rage of those triggers. While they work well indoors, they tend to be a little limiting once stepping outside. I looked around and found some great tuts (including a camo one) about extending the GI range. This post will describe how I did it (kinda quick and dirty).

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I know it sounds like an oxymoron, however, this is one of the best examples of hack'n mod beating the cr*p out of store bought solutions.

Canberra Australia based photographer Jamie Carl, rigged together a great system that will wireless your USB setup (can you use wireless as a verb? not sure). This is so trivial that it just shouts, Why didn't I do this before.

Jamie says this setup helped hum nail a difficult car-rigged setup where he did not know how fast the car will be going, and as a result did not know what shutter speed to use for good motion blur on the road, but no camera blur on the car. Using a wireless USB Carl was able to sit shotgun and adjust the settings on the go. Click to continue ›

Nikon, Canon, Leica, Pentax, Sigma, Tokina, and a host of other lens makers are all striving to bring you the sharpest lenses with all optical aberrations reduced to the minimum. That's too bad! Because with lenses, as with life, sometimes it's the imperfections that make things interesting.

The image on the left was shot with the imperfect optics of a homemade lens. Exploring the soft, dreamy world of DIY camera lenses in surprisingly easy. Let me show you.

There are two components necessary for a homemade camera lens suitable for use on a SLR or DSLR: the optics (to focus the light) and the mechanics (to hold the optics in place and hopefully provide a method of adjusting the focus and aperture). Click to continue ›

In the following post, Jay Scott shares how he built an oral autofocus shutter release to enable him to take better photographs from his wheelchair. Jay is a talented photographer and a Strobist in heart, you can check his portfolio here.

Ever since I first began photography with a DSLR the possibility of having a problem with the weight of the camera existed for me. Why, you might ask? Because my hands (and the rest of my body from the chest down) are paralyzed. I have plenty of arm strength, but my dexterity with somewhat stiff, lifeless, fingers leaves something to be desired. I won't go into details about the cause of my paralysis, but you can read about it here if you are interested.

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Finally, the Bokeh Masters Kit gets mod. I could not be more proud.

It is a simple mode, a modal'e. Yet DIYP's kit is now a proud member of the modifiable products family. Kudos to Guy Tismansky for submitting it. If you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about and see this kit introduction post.

The mod is simple and really takes only 30 seconds to complete, once done it will allow you to easily carry your bokeh discs by attaching the discs wallet to the camera strap. If you already have a kit, simply follow the instructions below. [The image above was taken by Marco_Parc using the bokeh masters kit] Click to continue ›