Photographer Jesse David Mcgrady shares an awesome tip for creating hazy and mystical photos in camera using a simple ingredient you probably have right next to you.
Photographing someone or somewhere kinda boring or plain? Want to punch it up with some cool vintagey or light leak lens effects without sacrificing quality of the over all image or using photoshop? Then try this: Click to continue ›
If someone made a survey and checked to see what is the one piece of equipment you loose most, I am willing to place dollars for pennies that the answer would be lens caps. Those things just keep getting lost. I guess this why you have so many lens cap holders solutions out there.
Here is a nice idea by Flickr user RawSniper1 that uses nothing but 2 pieces of Lego, has a really shallow footprint and will save your cap.
It is probably one of those super simple ideas that make you smack your head and say how come I did not think about it before.
You would need a drill, some glue and a bit of wire to make this, but it is totally worth it if just for the innovation of using Lego in your process.
P.S. if you want something a bit more fancy, you can check Benny Johansson's lens cap holder which is probably the cutest lens cap holder in the world.
[Lego Gear on Flickr] Click to continue ›
You Can always square your photographs in post, but true inst-edicts will not stop there. How about permanently squaring your DSLR's view finder (Canon 40D in this instance). Now This is some real insta-commitment coming from Maciej Pietuszynski. Here is what you'll need:
I got an interesting mail from Alaa Abi Haidar (facebook) today, it tell a short story of a stolen footage and suggests an interesting solution on watermarking videos using shaped bokeh.
Here is the story:
"The clip below was an experimental attempt to automatically watermark clips and stills after one of my fashion clips was edited and broadcasted by one of the commercial regional TV channels in France without my consent and without any credit.
In fact the credit was cut off the original clip. However, for the time being, I prefer not to disclose any information about the TV and the people involved in the process.
We've featured a fair share of videos using shaped bokeh, but it is always about the discs that makes the shapes. We never actually taken about how to get the lights that make the bokeh thing right. And for the most of it, it's pretty simple. Just point your camera at a distant street / tree top / sparkling water / night car lights and you're good.
Well, here is something different. A clever technique for creating moving dots of lights that are not driving cars. LIGHTS's "Timing Is Everything" features a moving bokeh done by wrapping LEDs on a giant barrel like device and spinning it while shooting. Pretty clever if you ask me. (video and BTS after the jump) Click to continue ›
Here is a quick and fun project submitted to our How I Took It Contest by Nick Cool. It shows how to build a soft focus filter (kinda like a lensbaby soft focus) from a small-hole sink filter.
This is what the resulting photographs will look like out of camera.
A few days ago we had a tutorial showing how to crack open and IR-ize a Cheapo $28 Canon point and shoot. Today we are upping the stakes doing a similar operation on a Pentax K10D. This installment is more of a story told by Jerry Biehler than a micro-step-by-micro-step tutorial I hope it will inspire you to try new stuff. Of course, you are still running the risk of nuking your camera, and you will definitely void the warranty (if for some weird reason you still have a warranty on your K10D), so know the risk before you get to work. Click to continue ›
While it is pretty common to use Infra Red (IR) filters for IR photography, there is yet another, braver and non-reversible way to do it - remove the IR filter that's placed in front of the CCD.
The reason for removing the internal IR filter rather than using an IR lens filter, is that you get way (WAAAY) more infra red light to hit the sensor. On the down side, you will be doing a non-reversible, non-refundable, warranty-voiding surgery on your camera. So: A - you must really love infrared photography and B - you do this at your own risk. If you kill your $28 camera don't come crying, you knew this was an option. Click to continue ›
From the first time I saw the power in geotagging images I was immediately hooked. My Nikon D90 is capable of geotagging, but, unlike the S100 (for example) it has no internal GPS and requires the somewhat pricy GP-1 GPS Unit. I set out to make a better cheaper solution.
I started by doing a lot of research on this topic and it turns out that there is a fairly simple way to connect a receiver to a Nikon camera. Simple, if you don't mind a bit of makering :)
About 5 years ago we posted our first shaped bokeh tutorial, it has been on the top 5 popular posts lists for almost every day since. Over the time we amassed a huge wealth of information about shaped bokeh and I really thought we covered everything that there is to cover about it.
Guess not. Click to continue ›
