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How to make your own DIY Justin Clamp for half the cost of a real one

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Originally made to help Joe McNally solve problems that would occasionally pop up on shoots, the Justin Clamp has become a popular addition to many photographer kit bags. It was created by Bogen/Manfrotto employee Justin Stailey from some standard off the shelf components. It served its function perfectly, so it became known as the Justin Clamp we still have today.

While excellent, they’re not exactly cheap. A handful of these in your bag can set you back a couple of hundred bucks. Another Joe, photographer Joe Edelman, has different solution, though. A DIY option that costs about half of the original Manfrotto (less if you shop around), and it seems to be a very good substitute.

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Organise your studio or set with this DIY equipment cart

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Equipment cards for use in the studio or on-set can be expensive. REALLY expensive. Of course, those carts often need to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. For a small studio or low budget set, though, you don’t need to go to such expense. There are many other alternatives out there that can work just as well that you can customise for your own needs.

In this video from the guys at The Film Look, we see how they organise their own DIY equipment cart. Based off a standard $69 utility cart, it’s very functional after a little tweaking and customisation. And it allows you to keep all your kit organised on set so that you know where everything is, as well as give you a mobile tabletop for gear you’re using.

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I 3D-printed a Canon EF lens mount for Game Boy camera

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I was inspired by Tim Binnion‘s work with the Game Boy Camera and a cheap cellphone tele lens. I figured I’d up the ante and design and build a full Canon EF Mount for my Game Boy Camera. The GBC has a sensor size of about 3.6mm² which seems equivalent to a 1/4″ sensor (Wikipedia). This gives the GBC a crop factor of about 10.81. With my 70-200 f4 mounted on a 1.4x extender, this gives me a max equivalent focal distance of about 200×1.4×10.81=3,026.8mm.

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The Goodman One is an open source 3D printable medium format camera you can make yourself

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Dora Goodman is a creator of beautiful handcrafted and customised analogue film cameras. She’s always had an obsession with handmade objects, and cameras afford her many options to pursue that. She loves to design and build her own cameras from scratch. And for the last two years, Dora’s been working on an Open Source modular camera design that others can build for themselves.

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How to make your own DIY beauty dish for less than $10

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The beauty dish has become a staple of portrait and fashion photographers. When used well, they offer a pleasing and flattering look to your subject. The price of beauty dishes has come down in recent years as more have come to market. But you’re still not usually going to find one as cheap as making your own.

In this video from the folks at COOPH, we see how we can make our own DIY beauty dish for minimal cost and tools. And while they portray it sitting on top of the camera in the video, and it will be better than using the popup flash, I’d still get it off the camera.

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How to build this heavy duty DIY camera car rig for only $30

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Mounting cameras to cars is a lot of fun. It can allow us to get some unique and unusual perspectives in photos and videos. But how do you attach a camera to a car? There are a bunch of different ways from inexpensive triple suction cup mounts (that work surprisingly well) to extremely expensive commercial solutions.

But what if you have a big load to carry that the little triple suction mount can’t handle, and you don’t have the budget for a high-end mounting system? Well, you can make your own. And you can do it for $30 or less, too. In this video from filmmaker Rob Wayne at PremiumBeat, we see how.

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How to make a DIY Scrim Jim for less than $80

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Scrim jims, butterflies, overheads, 4×4 frames, whatever you want to call them, are a staple on most film sets – and for good reason. They can be used to turn almost any light into a large soft light source; they can be used to even out the light during outdoor shoots; and you can use them, with a dark fabric, as large flags. They’re versatile, they’re sturdy, they’re portable, and by building them ourselves, they’re certainly worth having one or two in your kit. Matthews and Westcott, among others, make these that you can pick up for $150 – 200, but today we’re going to make our own for around $80.

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How to 3D print your own DIY motorised tracking 2-axis camera slider

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I’ve been getting into 3D printing quite a bit this year. Mostly with regard to how it can help me with my own photography and video challenges. One of the first things I did was to motorise my camera slider. Now, my own efforts in this realm are still quite basic, but while researching how others have overcome certain issues in this area, I came across this tutorial recently posted to Instructables by jjRobots.

It’s a tracking 2-axis motorised, mostly 3D printed camera slider. This means that it doesn’t just move the camera from one end of the slider to the other, but it also turns the camera. This way, your camera can move while remaining fixed on a specific target. And it’s all controlled from your smartphone – that app’s available for free, too.

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This is how you build a USCSS Nostromo (Alien ’79) inspired battery charging station

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Organizing all sorts of batteries and chargers is always a big problem among photographers. We’ve seen quite a few crafty people tackle this problem by creating their own charging stations. However, none of them could ever be as remarkable as the Nostromo-inspired version that Eric Strebel built. In this video he shows you exactly how he did it.

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