DIYPhotography.net

The following guest post and videos about astrophotography tips and building a DIY star tracker was submitted by Jason Anderson from Canon Blogger.

 How many times have you looked at the nighttime sky, seen some amazing expanse of stars and just thought, “Hey, now that’d be a cool shot!”? From stars and nebula to comets and asteroids, then planets and galaxies, outer space is still a source of awe and wonder for so many of us it’s no doubt that when we capture images from this overly undiscovered frontier, it is surely to grab the viewers attention.

Well, if you want to retain that viewer attention (and who doesn’t...?) it can help to have images that pop! Astrophotography is a tough area to make images pop because we are dealing with something that we don’t have a lot of – light! Remember, photography by definition means “to write with light”. Yet stars in a more or less black sky can make this challenging. So, what can we do? Click to continue ›

The following article is a guest post by Dana Maltby a.k.a. Twin Cities Brightest a.k.a { tcb } a Light Painting Art Performer.

Greetings again from Minnesota where it’s getting cold again. Below freezing last night, brrrrr!! But there ain’t no rest for the wicked, so let's get back into some light painting techniques. This time I would like to talk a bit about Cold Cathodes.

A cold cathode is a tube of light that has a similar look to neon lights. It is brighter than a glow stick, and you can attach an on/off switch making them much more versatile in the field. You can find different kinds of these cold cathode tubes. They can be found at auto part stores, for in car light accents and under car lighting.

Click to continue ›

Gotta love strawberries. And gotta love strawberries in cream even more.

Maybe this is why my taste buds had me coming to this picture again and again.

Then again, it might be the technical details of the shot that drew my attention. Getting a nice splash is hard enough but getting strawberry on spoon splash is nearly impossible. Read on for some musings, thoughts and tips.

Click to continue ›

The following article is a guest post by Dana Maltby a.k.a. Twin Cities Brightest a.k.a { tcb } an addict to Light Painting.

In the last Light painting installation we saw the huge variety of tools and toys I use for creating Light Painting Art.

One of the things that came strong in the comments was the need to bind those tools to the actual process of taking the image. Well, now I am going to do just this.

So let's talk about the hottest and most natural object to paint with light, the orb. Also known as a sphere. The good news is that orbs can be made with light quite easily.

Click to continue ›

The following article is a guest post by Dana Maltby a.k.a. Twin Cities Brightest a.k.a { tcb } an addict to Light Painting.

Now that you know the basics of light painting let's move on to creating the effects you want.

If you have a certain idea about a lighting effect you want, chances are you can make it happen. Some ideas are cheap and inexpensive while others can be costly and time consuming. Every project is a great learning experience, and the results seen in the photos later on will keep you on your toes and inspired constantly.

In the following post I will present the tools of the trade that I use to create my light painting art. If you know of other light painting tools and tricks, please add them in the comments.

For each of the images below a different tool was used as the main tool. Some of the images were done using several tools, in that case I mentioned the tool which has the main effect. Click to continue ›

The following article is a guest post by Dana Maltby a.k.a. Twin Cities Brightest a.k.a { tcb } an addict to Light Painting.

In a series of posts Dana will cover various aspects of light painting: camera settings; tools of the trade; tip and tricks and "walk through"s for several light painting images.

Stay tuned as the series rolls out.

Click to continue ›

As you may know, I am involved with a secret project. For this secret project I needed dots, plenty of dots.

My first thought was to punch some holes in a black Bristol and cover the flash up. Then (I naively thought) I'd get a nice projection of spots on the adjacent wall. Right? Wrong!

Click to continue ›

High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR) is a creative technique in which you combine 3, 5 or 7 images shot at different exposures, which are then merged into a single image.

The advantages are far more detail, vibrant color and control of lighting than you could ever achieve by manipulating a single JPG or RAW image in Photoshop.

In the following post Gavin Phillips will cover some of the main (yet often overlooked) aspects of HDR Photography.

(Roll your mouse over any of the images and linger for a second to see how it looked like before HDRing it).

Click to continue ›

Time Lapse movies are really cool. Really. I got a nice shot of creating a time lapse movie when I moved to a new place. Here is how I did it.

WARNING: This is going to be a geeky post with lots of software downloads, hacks, and tweaks.

WARNING 2: Once you time-lapse, you can never go back (only fast forward).

UPDATE: the G10 has a CHDK build here.

Click to continue ›

I'll admit, Super Macro Your Cell Phone Camera With A DVD Lens is one weird title.

However, if you just moved to a blu ray DVD player and you're looking for some good use for your old DVD, cnflikt (who also took the shots for this tutorial) came up with a hack to enable you to take super macro shots with your cellphone. Of course you'll need a camera phone for that. cnflikt uses the notorious, yet old-skooled K800i, but any camera phone will work here.

Click to continue ›