DIYPhotography.net

Photographer Sasha Vasko wanted to get his Pentax-110 24mm lens on a Panasonic Lumix G1. I am sure you remember the G1, but do you remember the ultra small Pentax 110 series, it was quite popular at the days with a wonderful array of lenses.

By hacking the old lens with a C-mount to Micro 4/3 adapter (going through a 55mm filter stack cap, a faceplate and the lens mount and aperture assembly from the original sacrificed Pentax-110 Auto camera) Sasha created a match. Click to continue ›

How often did you hear that Zooming with your legs is not like zooming with your lens? They were right!

This video demonstrates how different focal lengths control the distortion of the human face, assuming of course that the face take the same amount of space in the frame.

It is quite an interesting and experiment, and really easy to replicate at home, if you don't believe the stuff you see on the internet. Click to continue ›

So a few days ago we featured a photoshop tutorial that shows how to blend an image onto a black and white portrait.

The reason we initially shared this tutorial is because it showed a quick and dirty way to kinda make a projected slide on person effect. (Not that you can't do it for real).

We got the following REAL projector tutorial courtesy of the awesome folks at Lomography, Instructables and Inventor Derte84. It uses an IKEA lamp rather than a strobe, so you'll have to adjust exposure. (sadly, the Isbrytare is end-of-lined, but it is still available in used stores and sometimes on eBay).

Click to continue ›

If you ever bought a second hand lens you probably know that one of the first things to do is to look through the lens and check for fungi.

See that image above, it's a fungi infested lens! It is there to serve the same purpose as the picture of the decaying tooth lady in the dentist's office - Don't let this happen to you. Click to continue ›

Sometimes you wanna have that specific POV of someone looking through a peephole. I guess the easiest way to shoot this is by sticking your camera through a peephole.

Dave from Knoptop shares how he converted a $7 200 degrees door peephole and a PVC reducer into a wide angle lens. The vignetting is pretty strong so I am not sure it is usable as a "real" fisheye, but the effect is still pretty cool for $7.

Click to continue ›

UPDATE: for some still image and a note from the creator, scroll to the bottom

You know how everything looks better on the wide screen? I attribute it all to the aspect ratio. Everything looks nice on widescreen.

The thing is that our DSLRs take images with 2:3 ratio and if we crop them we lose quality. This is where anamorphic lenses come into play, anamorphic lenses stretch the image to capture widescreen images/footage on 2:3 sensors. Just like an anamorphic pinhole captures wide screen images on a 35mm film.

Here is the problem, anamorphic lenses are kinda rare and expensive. Used anamorphic projection lenses on the other hand are bearable. Click to continue ›

We have seen our share of old lenses / new cameras before. But nothing as frenkensteinish as this GH2/Polaroid hybrid from Gabriel Verdugo.

The franken lens, (:, just a fun project of the weekend, I took an old polaroid camera, of the ones that printed the images in the 80´s, took out the plastic lens and placed into my micro four thirds camera.

The tubes that you see are macro tubes, that are used to be able to have the lens in focus (In this case the distance from the lens to the camera sensor must be the same distance that the light traveled from the lens to the printable paper inside the polaroid). Luckily, these tubes accept a 52mm ring, so I simply attached a 52mm ring into the lens, to make the Frankenlens interchangeable. Click to continue ›

A few weeks back I wrote about what rapid prototyping is doing to the traditional photography industry (well, any industry for that matter).

So it was a nice surprise to see this printable micro 4/3 tilt shift lens project from Joe Murphy. It is based upon the popular plunger lenses from Bhautik Joshi but is more rigid and does not use a toilet accessory.

That specific lens fits the MTF system, but the tutorial explains how to make lenses for other types of mounts.

The only think lacking in this system is a good name, "Tilt-Shift Micro Four Thirds Lens Adapter" is not very catchy. I suggest "The Bender".

Below is a short tutorial on how to make this lens (or order one using its thingiverse object), and tweak it for others systems, followed by some sample shots. Click to continue ›

Photographer Rick Nunn "documented the crap" out of it modding a 100 years old Kodak Vest Lens and fitting it on a Canon 5DmkII.

While the idea sounds complex Rick takes a very simple route, fitting the Kodak vest on a M42 extension tubes and connecting it to the camera using a cheap M42 to EF adapter.

A video describing the build along with some pictures is right after the jump. Click to continue ›

We featured some crazy starbucks hacks before and we featured some lens-hood hacks before, but we never featured any lens-hood coffee hack before.

Well, there is a first for everything. Flickr user Nick Cool just submitted this interesting lens hood hack made from a disposable coffee holder.

here is how Nick describes it:

Sometimes a lens hood is needed, but unless they are integrated to the lens, they are big and not easy to transport.

I used a hot cup sleeve as lens hood, not a brilliant idea but good enough to save the day.#