DIYPhotography.net

If you have ever taken your monitor outside, you know that it is hard to see it clearly with all the light that is bouncing around. And even more so on a sunny day on a sunny location. Of course, you could always buy one of them Monitor Hoods. but it would be so nice to make one of your own. Especially when it only takes a few minutes and costs almost nothing.

In this tutorial, Roger Sacul will show us how to make a quick and simple DIY monitor hood. The one here is used on flat screens, but you can also use it for laptops, or build smaller version for camera hoods. Click to continue ›

If you have lots of lenses, getting them all stored and neatly organized can be a drag. Personally, I use a cupboard but swear every time I need to get to one of them lenses that are on the back line.

Flickr user Stargazer95050 found a super clever way to organize his lenses. It seems like he is obsessed with organized lenses, this is his second clever Lens storage solution, The first one was using a cutlery tray. So aside from IKEA stopping to make the cutlery tray, he also needed a way to quickly move the lenses to his van while retaining easy lens access.

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Flickr user Stargazer95050 found a neat way to organize his photo gear in a drawer.

Using the grooves bumps and slits of a cutlery tray the lenses, bodies, strobes and other accessories lay safely in place.

Here is how Andy describes it: Click to continue ›

Making a 3D display of an object is a great way to display merchandise on line, so this tut would be very relevant to any product or still life photographers.

The usual way of making a 3D display is to put your item on a turn table. The less common way, yet sometime more effective (wit shoes for example) is to suspend the object from a rig. In the following tutorial, Photographer Matt Devlin (Flickr) walks us trough the a build of a 360 deg rig. Matt says (and I heartedly agree that this is a very simple rig to build - 3/10). Click to continue ›

If your photography workflow includes using Lightroom, you may wanna take a close look at Paddy For Lightroom an open source DIYish method of assigning keys to Lightroom actions and sliders.(We featured a similar concept before for GIMP, however this one is way, way more flexible)

The neat thing about Paddy for Lightroom is that it can be connected to almost any external input device including "standard" Genovation keyboards, external cashier keyboards, Midi controllers, well you name it. This means that you can map keys to do your some of your tedious work for you. Click to continue ›

If you have not heard about the Optimus Maximus keyboard, let me fill you in.

The idea is simple: Use OLED technology to place a tiny monitor on each key; Make each such small monitor completely configurable, and updatable in runtime; have each button display any image depending on what you are currently doing with your computer.

The easiest example to grasp is that pressing the shift key will turn all "engravings" on the keyboard to CAPS. But a more interesting application would be a keyboard that displays the icons from your favorite image editing software. No more having to memorize what Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S does (it save for the web). Each key will display an image of its action. Isn't it nice?

Well, you are about top learn how to make an Optimus Maximus keyboard yourself.

Uwe  Mayer (flickr, site) and Markus Dollinger (if you read German) show us how to make a keyboard that well, kinda does the same. Actually, this DIY keyboard is more like the awesome keyboard you get from RPG keys, but you can make one on your own and it will only cost about 30-40$. (See demos here). I just could not pass on the Optimus introduction.

You can use this keyboard to expedite your Lightroom workflow, your Gimp experience or your Photoshop speed-keying.

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The following tutorial on building an Ariel Monopod is a guest post by Adam Hajnos.

Recently I was carrying around my camera and tripod at a music festival when I got the idea to do an aerial shot. I extended the tripod out all the way and put the camera on a timer. Only problem is, my tripod weighs upwards of 50lbs. So here is a simple solution to make a lightweight, portable monopod for "aerial" photography.

Click to continue ›

In the previous post I demonstrated my lack of patience by constructing a Honl Speed Strap, while waiting for my Amazon Honl speed strap to arrive.

In this post, I'll show the accessories I built, and explain their various effects on a picture taken.

All my DIY accessories have real commercial products made by David Honl. While the lighting result is usually similar, I must say that Honl products look way more professional. (In fact they look professional enough that I bought some of them, even when I knew I can make them myself).

But, just before I go into the details of constructing and demonstrating the different accessories, I would like to highlight some of the comments on the original post, dealing with different materials that can be used to construct a better model of the speed strap. Click to continue ›

As you may know, I am a great fan of off camera flash

I've owned a Nikon SB-28 since my analog days and added a Nikon SB800 when going digital. Advised by Strobist, I added a third flash - a Nikon SB26.

To get all those flashes going off camera, I bought some cheapo Cactus (AKA Gadget Infinity) flash radio triggers - those can be found at eBay for just a few dollars. I initially bought two receivers and when I added the Nikon SB26 to my collection, I bought the third one.

I really like those cheapo triggers and up until now they were lots of fun (see this shot, I just can't miss a shot at showing my son off). Of course, if you need high reliability, you should consider the big brother: Pocket Wizards.

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Photographer J. Chris Hansen built the soup bowl beauty dish for his photography studio. It was all well and dandy while it was mounted on a speedlight. But when he tried to mount the beauty dish on an Alien Bee flash they melted. Luckily for us, Chris did not give up and upgraded the design to use stainless steal bowls. From here it is all Chris. Click to continue ›