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Now you can 3D print your own DIY Spekular-style lighting kit

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Spekular, the lighting system released by Spiffy Gear back in 2017 was a particularly unique lighting system at the time. Offering a modular setup with interlinked joints that would let you chain a bunch of them together in order to create all kinds of rings, triangles, stars and even panels. I have a couple of Spekular kits myself and they’ve been fantastic for creating light in situations where more bulky LEDs and softboxes would have been impossible.

Recently, though, while browsing for something on Printables, I found a 3D printed lighting system that looked awfully familiar. It seems that somebody, who goes by the name of cfaulkingham, has designed a system that basically looks like a mini open source Spekular clone that you can 3D print yourself. What makes this one particularly useful, though, is that it runs on only five volts.

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The OS-ARM is a 3D printed open source multi-axis robot arm designed for use with cameras

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Putting cameras on robot arms is not a new idea. We’ve seen it done plenty of times by folks like Steve Giralt and the Slow Mo Guys. But it’s not exactly a cheap venture. Even very basic robot arms can cost a few grand and when you’re looking at the Bolt arms used by Steve and the Slow Mo Guys, you’re getting up into the tens of thousands. But this open source project from Andrew Degonge at 3DprintedLife plans to change that.

he’s been working on a project called OS-ARM. It’s a 3D printable low cost, high performance motion control robot arm. At least, that’s the plan when it’s finished. Its project goals are to have 6 axes (it currently has 5), smooth, repeatable motion, support a 1kg payload, be easy to produce and cost less than $500 in materials. It’s still in development, but as you can see in the video above, it’s already come a long way.

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I saved $250 by making my own DIY contrast filter holder for the Omega B66 enlarger

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Have you ever had a repeated inconvenience that finally makes you say to yourself “okay, I’m done with this garbage”? Well, that’s the exact feeling I had with using contrast filters on my enlarger. Anytime I wanted to use a contrast filter, I needed to use tape to hold it in place while I was printing.

The design of some Omega enlargers requires a removable “cradle” that holds the filters underneath the lens. After a bit of searching online, I found that B&H Photo sells a replacement filter holder for B series enlargers for the low low price of $269. Even used, these things are expensive. eBay had a few listed that were selling for about $79. Unwilling to part with my hard-earned cash for such a frivolous purchase I was left with the only other option- to build one myself.

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How to cut your own custom case foam for camera and audio gear storage

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When you need to travel with gear that you want to keep safe, it can be a pain. Sure, you can just throw a bunch of stuff in a backpack, but if you’re going somewhere rugged and it’s being thrown around a lot during travel, a hard case like a Pelican or Nuprol case is often much better. But they’re not always that easy to organise. They usually come with pick and pluck foam or generic dividers that don’t really do the job as well as you’d like.

The best solution for hard case storage is custom foam. There are a number of services out there that’ll do this for you but you can also do it yourself. There are a bunch of different foam options out there, but Jonathan at Shadow Foam in the UK has put together a complete tutorial showing how to plan out, cut and build your own case interiors – including a very cool charging dock that’ll charge up to 16 batteries at once.

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This compact mini matte box is 3D printable at home and holds 4×5.65″ cinema filters

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There are so many mini matte boxes out there on the market these days that it can be difficult to decide which to get. I mean SmallRig alone makes five different models now. But if you own a 3D printer and have some filament lying around doing nothing, then you can have a go at making this one.

It’s made by Edward Park at Mountain Breeze Studio, the same guy that does those cool retro lens cinema housings. This isn’t the first matte box Edward’s made, but it’s a complete redesign over his original and looks super slick. It also holds both 4×4″ (100x100mm) and 4×5.65″ (100x150mm) square filters – which is more than can be said for some commercial options.

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The Pikon is a 3D printed interchangeable lens Raspberry Pi camera with a mirrorless camera form factor

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You know, it’s funny. I just want from saying how there are hardly any Pi 3 portable cameras out there that make use of the Pi High Quality Camera to offer interchangeable lenses and then a bunch pop up all at the same time. This one comes from Kevin McAleer, and it’s a bit like the Paparazzo, except in a much more convenient and useful form factor while still sporting a large touchscreen interface.

As it’s using the Pi HQ Camera module, it has a C-mount on the front to provide interchangeable lens options. You can even get C-mount adapters to let you use Nikon, Canon, M42 and other lenses on there, so you’re not just limited to C-mount lenses. It’s powered by a NanoWave 5000mAh USB battery pack and while the software still needs a little work, the hardware all comes together pretty well.

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Slidee is probably the cheapeast non-motorised automatic DIY camera slider you can make yourself

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This is a pretty novel idea for a camera slider, called Slidee from maker Shivam Dehinwal. It has no motors, no Bluetooth, no electronics at all and no batteries. It’s built around a regular retractable tape measure. Well, ok, a not-quite-regular retractable tape measure. It’s built specifically around the Komelon Touch Lock measuring tape because it has built-in speed control – which is important when you want to control how quickly your camera moves.

It’s very cool, using a simple 3D printed housing with some bearing wheels and a simple mechanism to hold the retraction button at different positions to adjust the retraction speed. Essentially, the button acts like a variable speed control. The harder you push it, the quicker it retracts. You will, of course, need a 3D printer – or a friend willing to make the printed components – but this is about as simple as it gets.

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The “Pi Cam” is a 12-megapixel, 3D printed, Raspberry Pi-powered camera you can control from anywhere

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I knew we’d see a smaller interchangeable lens Raspberry Pi-powered camera than the Paparazzo at some point. This one’s a little different, though. Instead of walking around and shooting pictures like a regular camera, this one requires a little external tech to access it. But you can access it from anywhere in the world, whether it be right next to you on your desk or literally on the opposite side of the planet – as long as it’s connected to the Internet.

Designed by Mukesh Sankhlaa, the Pi Cam is a “Remote Raspberry Pi Desktop/Camera/Server”. It’s sort of like an IP camera, except it runs Linux and opens up the door for all kinds of potential uses from simple remote access to automated features like timelapse. And all of the STL files and code are available for you to download. The build requires a handful of off-the-shelf components as well as some 3D-printed parts. But once you’ve got all the parts printed and gathered, assembly is pretty quick.

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This 3D printed 163mm f/2.5 lens with built-in aperture and focus adjustments can be made for less than $15

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When it comes to 3D printed lenses, they usually suffer from some limitations that manufactured lenses do not. Two of those limitations specifically are the lack of a variable aperture that can be stopped down and focus adjustment. Some 3D printed lenses get around the focus issue by using a commercially available helicoid lens adapter. And to solve the aperture problem, they may have swappable inserts.

Well, this 163mm f/2.5 3D printed telephoto lens from Felix Steel at Pixels and Prisms features both a fully adjustable 12-blade diaphragm aperture (a first for full-frame 3D printed lenses) as well as a manual focusing mechanism that can lock in the fully extended or fully retracted positions. Aside from the glass, it’s 100% 3D printed and can be built for less than $15. It’s also open source.

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This DIY e-paper display plays movies in ultra slow motion and would take years to play one back completely

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There seems to be a weird obsession with super slow movie players lately. I’ve seen a few of them come scroll up my screen lately, but this one’s… Well, it kinda takes the cake, with a new frame being rendered about every half an hour. And it uses virtually no power in order to be able to do it, too. It’s based off an ESP32 in “Deep Sleep” mode and draws about 12uA (that’s 0.000012 Amps!). It’s projected that its 2,000mAh battery should last… oh, about 1.2 years.

It’s an interesting way to have a kind of constantly changing photo frame, that progresses one frame through a video sequence at a time in extremely slow fashion. One frame every 30 minutes would means that a movie like The Matrix (just the first one, not the whole trilogy) would take just over eleven years to watch in its entirety. In real-time, the duration of The Matrix is about 2 hours and 16 minutes.

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