DIYPhotography.net

If you own one of them 90's film cameras and stopped using it because digital is so hip right now, you're gonna dust it off once you're done reading this tutorial.

In this tutorial photographer Richard Hill is going to explain how to convert your old film camera combined with a strobe into a background generator (which pros also like to call Cookie Projector or a gobo projector).

We featured a strobe based background generator before, which was based on a box and Fresnel lenses. This time around the shades can be way more delicate. Here comes Richard: 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 ›

Now, here is a question, what do you do with all your seamless backdrops while they are not in use?

Store them of course. Savage has a nice sponge system for storing backdrops, the right way - standing up.

Why do you want to store them standing up? Because if you store seamless paper lying down you will get rippled paper. The weight of the paper sets on the bottom part of the paper and presses it against the floor. While this does not crease the paper, it reshapes it into an oval, and when rolled out it will show ripples. not that good.

So, how about that Savage system again? Well, to store a seamless upright, you'll need a wall as high at least as the length of the paper - 3 meters. While this is not rare in studios it is kinda rare in home studios. Click to continue ›

The following post about 3 ways to DIY your Chroma Key was made by Ben Eadie of DVRebelGear.com.

There are several ways to get a decent chroma background for a photo for the DIYer and the results are just as good as any pro system I have encountered. We will cover 3 solutions I have used with great success and all cost less than $15. You can use a green sheet, you can paint a wall and you can make a pop out chroma key like a pop out reflector. I use green for my key but you can also use blue if you choose. Click to continue ›

UPDATE: Looks like Kurbster droped out of flickr taking the very excellent set of strobist studio with him. I am going to leave the post here as the text still has value, although the images were soooooo much better to understand the concept from.

Just spent some good amount of time over at Kurbster photo stream. Seems like he completely nailed the whole, turn-a-room-into-a-strobist-studio thing.

Kurbster challenged Home Depot classic departments and generously turned some cheap and ordinary items into studio elements.

I'm gonna go over some of the challenges that Kurbster so elegantly solved.

I've had it happen when I heard a veteran photog telling another, "This one? You cannot do this one, you don't have the gear".

Now, as the name of the site suggests, this is not what I consider a good answer. A better answer would be a breakdown of the shoot, trying to get some understanding of what is a must for it, what gear is needed and how can we make up for the gear we don't have. Maybe with another piece of gear; maybe in post; and maybe by changing one of the underlying assumptions that we initially had when thinking about the shoot.

Photographer Scott Bourke (flickr) shows this exact king of thinking in his Sportraits session. There is a nice how to video and then some thoughts. I'd love to hear your take on dealing with gear shortage in the comments. Click to continue ›

One of the comments I got when I started the Studio @ Home series was about flooring. I mean not *all* of our pictures are seamless white. Some pictures are taken with the floor and background as part of the picture.

We covered spaces and backgrounds quite a bit but never gave enough attention to that thing under our feet called floor. Here is a neat little way to create instant flooring that looks like hardwood floor, checkers, or almost any other cool pattern.

Most hardware stores in the US hold something called Vinyl Flooring Sheets. Donno how to describe those other that rollable floor.

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I'm gonna talk about Plexi in a moment, but first, Happy Halloween everyone.

OK, Plexi. 

It is very common for a product shot to be built from two symmetrical halves, the product on top and a reflection on the bottom.

I tried taking shoe images like this using a mirror and some glass, but with both I got two reflection - one from the upper surface of the glass and one from the lower surface on the glass. I then tried using durable nylon to get the same effect which was nice, however the reflection image was not sharp.

Then. Came. Plexi.

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The following article is a guest post by Ilya Titov, a photographer and web designer, who also runs a great blog at blog.webboggles.com.

Are you a photographer who needs to take dozens of high quality photographs every day?

Are you a designer who has to process the above? - I am both, and I cheated.

Well, not really, I just optimized the way I go about achieving the target outcome. I dothis by using a home grown illuminated light table (or slope). Read on for full details.

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Two things about backdrops.

1. Studio backdrops are not cheap.  A single color muslin backdrop can cost up to 30$ and the fancy ones with patterns can cost even more.

2.  Backdrops take space. No matter how you look at it, each roll of seamless or fold up fabric take space. It is especially "bad" if you're using seamless paper. I mean those rolls are huge and having just a few of them will get you a 'sad smiley' with your significant other.

The easy solution of course is to use a black backdrop; a white backdrop and some magic to get all the rest. (If you've already gelled flashes till your head popped, skip right to the pattern part).

Click to continue ›