DIYPhotography.net

Elizabeth Giorgi of Being Geek Chic (God, I love this name) shares a great little tutorial that shows you how to make a fashionable camera wrist strap. The kind that is kinda like lanyard that keep cameras from finding their way to the cement pavement.

The stitching job is really easy and if you ever wanted to get into sewing (come'on I know you do) this is a great starters project, that will ease you in to the world of doubles, zig-zags and overlocks. (And you win a wonderful strap in the process). Hit the jump for a full movie tutorial. Click to continue ›

We have featured a few DIY versions of the C-loop system before, but I think that is the simplest one yet.

Photographer Rui Nelson Silva came up with this simple plate and bolt solution for a bottom-attached camera strap.

It is based around a small aluminum plate that you can make if you have the skill or buy a similar one at your local hardware store. Click to continue ›

I just love it when people use ordinary stuff to create new gear. Take a Yoyo for example. It's built to roll and collect wire, reminds you of something? It reminded Marc Cocchio of a basic slider. And indeed a slider was build from a yoyo. Here are Marc's rough guidelines on how to make a similar device.

(Of course, if Yoyo seems absurd to you, you can always go for a pen or a BBQ Rotisserie.

As a maker, Marc used all kinds of scrap that was lying around and a bit of trial and error, so the tutorial below is set so you can build a similar (yet not an exact copy) of the slider.

The non-cheap portion of this project is the camera, remote and tripod. It's important to have a tripod with an "arm" that can rotate such as my Giottos MT8361. Manfrotto makes a few cool ones, too. Click to continue ›

A while back we wrote about the M-Plate, a high end Camera Strap system designed (among other things) to support a tripod. Of course, this is not the only solution, and cheaper easier solution (though a but more limited) can be designed at the cost of a few pennies.

Sun Sniper, C-loops and other straps are fine but all lack of one or two features that prevented me from breaking the coin vase. Some are too light and I wouldn’t dare relying on them with my camera, others don’t have threads to mount on a tripod, others just aren’t DIY. So I came up with my own design (more an improvement of other projects) that combine almost all the qualities of all the quick shooting straps made for compulsive photographers. Click to continue ›

A few weeks back Kickstarter's Cineskates project funded with almost half a million from backers.

It was only a matter of time till someone came up with a budget friendly solution. Instructables user fungus amungus built a similar contraption using a Hybrid Gorillapod and $35 worth of Rollerblade wheels (for two sets of dollies).

For this project you actually have to drill the Gorillapod unlike the click-based Cineskates system, but saving about a $100 may provide some incentive.

[Tripod Dolly on instructables] Click to continue ›

One of the main issues with sliding straps solutions like the C-loop and Black Rapid's FastenR-3 is that they take away your quick release plate mounting point.

That means that you need to choose if you are going to use a tripod OR sling your camera each time you go on a shoot, and need to take the plate or connector off each time you wanna switch.

Custom SLR (the guys behind the C loop) aim at solving this problem (and a few others) with a new kickstarters project, the M plate (I wonder if they are going to run through the Alphabet).

The idea is to make a plate that connects both with Manfrotto RC2 and Arca-Swiss quick release systems while providing an array of additional mounting points for a strap, a hand grip and a few rig products which they say are in the pipe.

Click to continue ›

This is one of the more clever tricks I saw, and despite it being old, it is still great.

The premise is that you can make a device that will give you about two more stops of steady exposure at almost no cost, using a bolt and a piece of string.

The video explaining this device is below and a more sophisticated version showing how to use more string and/or a door knob is on instructables.

Click to continue ›

If you ever went Kayaking, you know how hard it is to get a good shot or a video of the trip. You can always hand hold the camera, but it would be very hard to stabilize and will of course take one hand away from the paddle.

One of the high end ways to overcome this lack of free hand is to use a GoPro Helmet Hero, but this will set you back 300$.

Another more frugal way is to use a toilet flange as photographer and kayak paddler Jeremy Richter explains in the post below. Click to continue ›

Recently I treated myself to the Manfrotto 131DDB Double Head Support (USA) / (AUS) which allows me to mount both my camera and a laptop on the same tripod, for when I'm shooting tethered.

Now all I needed was a platform for my notebook; but all I could find available were platforms for laptops. Too big for what I needed and I also wanted something a little more secure so that my notebook would not be easily knocked over. Click to continue ›

Sometimes you'd wanna mount a camera next to the driver. This gives you a great POV as the shotgun passenger.

For stills you may wanna do this if you want to catch the dial going up to 88 MHP without breaking the law or shopping the speed in.

But I find this technique to be more relevant for videographers that want to use the shotgun POV as part of their story telling.

While a Gorillapod may be an option for smaller cameras, big cameras need more support. In this tutorial, Boris Georgiev is going to show us how to build a very simple and cheap shotgun mount. Click to continue ›