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How to replace light seals in old film cameras for less than $5 with stuff you can find at Walmart

With the rise in popularity of film over the last few years, it’s no surprise that a lot of old (really old) cameras are making their way back into the used market. Some of these cameras can be 50+ years old and they’re wonderful cameras to go out and run some film through. The problem, though, is that when they get that old (and sometimes not even that old) the seals that prevent light from leaking into your camera can disintegrate and need replacing.

You can, of course, get your old camera cleaned and sealed at a local camera shop (assuming there’s one still left near you that knows what they’re doing) but you can also do it yourself. In this video, Jonathan Paragas of KingJvpes walks us through swapping out the light seals in one of his old Nikomat FTn cameras using nothing but stuff he found in the local craft aisle at his local Walmart.

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This Arduino-powered DIY macro rail helps you shoot perfect stacked macro shots every time

If there’s one essential item for macro photography, aside from a macro lens (or extension tubes), it’s a macro focusing rail. We’ve featured a few focusing rails here on DIYP before, like the NiSi NM-180 (review here), as well as some other DIY solutions. This one, from Curious Scientist, is an ongoing project based around an Arduino Nano that uses a stepper motor to move your camera along a rail in fine increments.

I say it’s an ongoing project because since releasing his first video on his motorised macro rail slider only a month ago, he’s already posted an update showing almost a complete redesign of the staging platform on which you mount the camera. Depending on your camera and needs, either design might work very well for you, so I’ve included his videos below for both of them.

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How to build your own DIY triple-display laptop to maximise your editing experience

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Triple display laptops have almost sort of been a thing since 2017 when Razer first showed off their then-top-secret triple-display laptop to Linus Tech Tips at CES. Those early prototypes were stolen and somebody was even caught trying to sell them, but they’ve kind of disappeared ever since. There haven’t been any commercially available laptops with triple displays, and most DIY solutions are a little brutal at best.

There are some bolt-on solutions to turn your regular single monitor laptop into a triple monitor machine, but Matt at DIY Perks thinks he’s come up with his own ultimate solution. Naturally, it’s a DIY job, and it actually seems to work pretty well. Matt’s trick is to change the aspect ratio of the displays, going to a pair of vertical iPad displays instead of adding a pair of horizontal screens.

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This DIY gadget captures and saves metadata for your film photography cameras

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One of the great things about digital photography is that it stores metadata within the files of each your photos. It allows you to have a permanent, searchable archive of every image you’ve ever shot. Right now, I can quickly and easily go search for any photograph I’ve shot in the last 21 years (I switched to DSLRs in ’02) and see exactly what camera and lens I used, as well as the exposure settings and other information.

Film doesn’t really do this, though. After all, it’s an analogue medium. At best, typically, we might see the date and time impressed upon the image itself during capture but beyond that… Not really. This device, though, from Alessandro Genova helps you to capture the settings for every film photo you ever take. And it even has a built-in light meter!

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How to turn an old floppy disk into a free infrared camera filter

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Remember floppy disks? We’ve come a long way since they were the primary method of data storage, and now we have terabytes of storage on a cloud, hard disks, and even flash drives. So, your old, dusty floppies are lying somewhere forgotten, and they’re entirely useless. Or are they?

Mathieu Stern dug up some old floppy disks and paired one of them with his camera. How, you may wonder? Well, he turned one of them into an infrared filter. It’s a DIY project that costs basically or literally nothing, and it’s also pretty simple to do. So, if you’re an infrared photographer, you’re going to love this.

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The LEDCard is a pocket-sized DIY macro ringlight for your smartphone

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This looks like a fun little project for the electronics-inclined. It’s called the LEDCard, and it’s a credit card-sized macro ring light for your phone that wraps around your smartphone camera’s lens. And if you don’t have a smartphone capable of macro-focusing, don’t worry! LEDCard’s creator, MisterHW, has thought of you, too, with a recess to insert a moulded acrylic lens to help you focus closer.

The whole thing lives on a single PCB and uses rechargeable LIR2430 Lithium-Ion cells, which charge up over USB. Upon charging, the LEDCard requires no wires or cables. It’s turned on or off by the simple push of a button, and an LM3410 LED driver IC lights up all of the SMD LEDs, illuminating the view around your lens for close-up subjects.

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How to build long-working-distance macro lens rigs with your DSLR or mirrorless camera

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Long Distance Working Objectives (LDW) are specially designed lenses intended to provide high-resolution imaging and a greater working distance when compared to conventional lenses.

The benefit to using these in a macro or micro range is that the configuration provides more room to illuminate the subject and also to image at a more convenient distance for focus stacking techniques.

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How I hacked Polaroid Big Shot to shoot Instax film

Released in 1971, the Polaroid Big Shot was a funky, green plastic camera that was built for one thing: portraits. The plastic behemoth is simply designed, using a fixed focus 200mm, single element plastic meniscus lens. The grip has a stereoscopic rangefinder integrated in it, which makes framing and achieving focus easy. Focal length is fixed at approximately three feet, emphasizing the portrait centrality of this camera. The shutter speed is a static 1/52 second, combined with an adjustable aperture of f56, f36 or f24. A small aperture and rather slow shutter speed meant most “normally” lit photos would be underexposed, especially indoors, so most photos would require the use of a flash.

For the flash the Big Shot uses Magicubes, which are an explosive, four use, disposable flash cube. There is a large Fresnel diffuser for the flash that is built into the front of the camera, which softens shadows and makes the flash much less harsh. A favorite of Warhol, he used the camera to shoot dozens of portraits, often using the resulting Polaroids as basis for his screen-printing art.

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Creating the impossible f/0.3 lens: The fastest lens ever

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A few years ago, Nikolas Moldenhauer of Media Division showed us how he and Kolari Vision modified and used an ultra-fast f/0.7 lens. And now, Nikolas and his team have gone even further and built something “impossible.” It’s an f/0.3 lens, faster than any lens you’ve ever seen.

In a video, Nikolas shares the entire process behind this incredible piece of gear. What’s more, Media Division also filmed a short film on it to show you its capabilities.

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How to make a DIY customized clapperboard on the budget

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Hey Filmmakers Chung Dha here, this here is my clapperboard that I DIY-modded it to have a lot of improvements so it can be used on set avoiding a lot of issues, but also making certain things faster. Under here is just a very basic and affordable clapperboard you can easily buy from Amazon or anywhere else and there aren’t any clapperboards you can just buy with all the features built-in.  [Read More…]

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