DIYPhotography.net

Most cameras are capable of creating 'acceptably good' white balance on your photos. And even if they're failing, you can make a pretty decent guess for what you think the white balance should have been in post production.

But what if you want to take the guesswork out of the equation, and get perfect white balance every time? The professionals use something called a 'gray card' (or 'grey card', depending on where in the world you learned to write English). The name says it all: it's a gray piece of card or plastic that you can use to balance your photographs. Click to continue ›

Interesting subjects make for great photographs, so are interesting backgrounds. Photographer Karl Zemlin has a great DIY for projecting strobe light to create interesting backgrounds. (He also has a nifty DIY section on his site)

All you would need is a box, a few Fresnel lenses and some textured glass. The main idea is that you could get the texture of the glass projected on a seamless white (or any other smooth) background.

What makes this design really rock is the little tripod socket at the bottom, so you can simply place this behind your subject on a light stand and have a symmetrical background. Click to continue ›

Photographer Benjamin Von Wong sent over a couple of vids showing how he shot Triggered Response, A rock band from Montreal.

To go with the rocky band, Ben and Eva Jinn Productions got them completely drenched and splashed. All while keeping both photography gear and band gear safe.

The video is divided into two parts: a behind the scenes which explains the thought and execution of the shoot itself and a quick Photoshop composite primer that explains how the images were combined. vids after the jump. Click to continue ›

Glass is one of the hardest thing to photograph. It is transparent, hard to define, and punish for every spec of dust. In this post, we will explore two cheap, easy ways to ease the pain of shooting glass. And get stuffed with Pringles while doing so.

Bright Field and Dark Field are two lighting techniques used to shoot glass I first saw the term while reading Light Science & Magic though the principles are probably way older then the book.

Photographer Steve Bennett came up with a sweet and super cheap setup to perform both lighting schemes quickly and on a budget. Click to continue ›

As a child we used to have a special plastic container in the fridge. The battery container. At any given moment it had a about two dozen batteries.

As I grew up and started to use a camera (a used Nikon F70) and a strobe (A used SB28), and then 5 strobes  it was only natural come up with a better system.

A system that would be kind to mother earth on one hand, and will allow me to shoot as much as I want on the other. The system evolved over the years, and will probably keep changing. This is where I stand now.

Click to continue ›

A few days ago, Benjamin Von Wong (flickr) posted a photograph called rejection to his photostream. It was quite an extra ordinary piece of work in my mind.

There was a small bit of info in the captions that caught my eyes: "The Behind the Scenes is actually ready... Eva is just waiting for me to finish up the edits"

I guess Eva is done waiting, because f-stoppers just posted the very cool behind the scenes on this one. Click to continue ›

Jay P. Morgan over at F-stoppers just posted a great video tut showing how to make rain. It is a lot simpler that what I thought. And all it takes is fan head sprayer (like the one from your back yard).

I checked on Amazon, they go as low as $7.30.

This 3:51 video is packed with lighting tips. Aside telling how to light rain, it discusses light placement, modifiers motivation and ambient control. All with examples. For me it just felt like a workshop squeezed into half a coffee break.

RSS folks, click here to watch the video.

J. P. Morgan's How To Make A Rain Machine For Video Or Stills via fstoppers. Click to continue ›

It would be very pretentious of me to declare that looking at the photographs and diagrams below will teach you how to light. That said, looking at the photographs and setups and trying to understand the motivation behind the lighting will give you a good start when dealing with similar lighting dilemmas.

You can always come back to this post to see how a particular image was lit to make a similar setup or to use it as a stepping stone for your own. Click to continue ›

when I was your age we used to squint/half squint to measure light!

OK, I am not that old. Actually my father didn't even take photographs beyond the average vacation on the beach photo.

Yet, there are times when you have to calculate exposure manually, or even harder, calculate flash settings. Mixing flash and ambient is no rocket science - to quote a certain DH. However, it seems that one of the issues that is hard on everyone is when to start in terms of aperture, shutter speed and flash output.

Photographer Domjan Svilkovic came up with a nifty little card that can help you do just that using the ultra highly modifiable yet super cheap YN460 strobe. I would go and say that it may be considered a printable flash meter. Seems that the low price is driving those to be very popular.

The card and instructions after the jump. Click to continue ›

Looks like the Strobist community is taking over the iPhone apps stores.

Two new members to that community - the new Studio Rig Locator and an iPhone port of SyLights.

SLR - Studio Rig Locator is an app that not only allows you to position lighting elements in the studio, but also allows a somewhat weird preview on the newly lit model. (this app is a paid app £3.49)

The other new iPhone App is a SyLights port to the iPhone. And really, I like the mobile version even more that I like the SyLights site (which is not that shabby at all). SyLights allows to create store and manipulate diagrams with loads and loads of studio equipment. Then those can be saved to your camera roll (iPhone's lingo for image directory). Best of all it is a free application.

both apps has intro videos after the jump. Click to continue ›