DIYPhotography.net

Photographer Toby Lockerbie sets a side some "passion time" each year for a personal project to help him recharge his creative batteries. After a year of pro shooting, it helps him to recoup some of the waning love of the craft. In 2012 he decided to hunt the Aurora lights at northern Norway.

While the resulting movie is heart taking, I find his back story even more interesting. It turns out it is not easy to shoot the Northern lights. Click to continue ›

If I had to divide the world into two equal parts, it would not be men vs. women. It would also not be Canon vs. Nikon. The most accurate division would probably be between the people that say that Velcro rules and those who say that Gaff tape rules. (we have featured them both plenty on the blog).

Here is a quick and not so dirty idea from Simon Anderson that you will probably find useful if you are doing extended timelapse photography with an intervalometer.

This thing is always dangling without a proper place to put it, so Simon placed a stretch of Velcro on the intervalometer and another stretch on the tripod. Now it has a good place to stay till the shooting is done.

I guess Simon is a Velcro person.

[Cable Release Placement | A Big World Through A Small Lens] Click to continue ›

If you're somebody who likes to take film photographs, you know the satisfaction you get from a film photo that you just don't feel when you use digital. Just imagine seeing the first photo you get out of a camera you designed and built yourself!

The process of designing and building a camera may seem daunting, but with a little patience and the help of this guide and some further reading, you'll be able to do it. You can use this information to figure out what you want to build, gather some simple materials and tools, and build it!

I want it to be clear that building a pinhole camera relies on your abilities, available materials, and your desired outcome. As a result, this guide is less of a step-by-step and more of a lesson on how pinhole cameras work, the physics and math involved, and some practical knowledge I gained while researching and building my own cameras. Click to continue ›

A few weeks back we shared Van Elder's post about how to create a wall of fire for light painting. It looked something like this:

Both Van Elder and myself were asked lots of questions so he came up with two follow up posts that explain some of the pitfalls and keys to make such a photo-shoot a success. Click to continue ›

Some things are not made for digital (yet). This beautiful wooden anamorphic pinhole camera by instructables user Matt Bechberger is probably one of them. If not for the curved film plane than for the lacquer finished wood.

This wonderful device takes 120 film and then spins it around a cylinder. It is housing a mechanism that keep tension on the film so it stays at a circular form around the lens pinhole. This lead to the creation of an anamorphic image. Click to continue ›

If you are shooting (or wanna shoot HDR) this is good news. The fine folks at SLR Lounge recently released a new 3 DVD set called Comprehensive Guide to HDR. Like any of their DVDs it is packed with information and has great educational value. It covers bracketed HDR, in-camera HDR, single-shot faux HDR, single-shot bracketed HDR, panoramic HDR and more! (see the complete pitch here). I asked their permission to post an expert of one of the tutorials on the blog as I think it's awesome stuff. Here we go.

HDR photography has become more and more popular due to recent technology. However, a great HDR image can be done with any DSLR camera. The process is actually pretty simple as long as you understand a few fundamental concepts and techniques. In this article, I will explain some basic information to help you reach your goal of producing a professional HDR photograph. Click to continue ›

Photographer Oriol Domingo sent in this tutorial which I find very interesting. It is a poor man's high-speed trigger for shooting balloons. It is one part cable, and two parts sewing needles, but no electronics or fancy laser activated triggers. Oriol connects his trigger to the shutter port, but of course you could connect it to a strobe and get some crazy explosions.

One of the interesting techniques I hadn’t still tried until now was to capture an exploding water balloon just in the moment the plastic breaks, but the water still has the shape of a balloon. I didn’t want to invest any money in laser barriers or something similar, so I built a very simple mechanism that wouldn’t give me the perfect timing but maybe an acceptable approach. Click to continue ›

Film is not dead. Actually it is so much alive that they were still making cameras for film only two years ago. Well... pinhole cameras. but that only makes it cooler.

The Rubikon 2 is a paper-fold pinhole camera designed by Jaroslav Juřica and released in 2010 under a Creative Commons license. (Which means its free for personal use, as long as you attribute). It is based off the 1970's Dirkon camera. Click to continue ›

With the popularity of fashion shoots and this blog increasing interest of high speed photography, I thought it would be interesting to break down a shoot that involves both, Kamerakind were happy to assist.

While traveling to Namibia is long and expensive it pays off in glorious nightscapes. The dry air and atmosphere conditions in Namibia earned it one of the dark sky reserve in 2012.

So it is not surprising that Namibia can produce some of the most beautiful night-time time lapses.

Namibian Nights is the work of Marsel van Oosten - a photographer and a tour guide from Amsterdam. It showcase some of the most popular sites in Namibia, like the quiver trees and the misty trees in Deadvlei. Click to continue ›