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How I made my own 4 x 5 slide projector on a budget

I have been shooting 4 x 5 color transparencies or commonly known as color slide film for many years but the best that I could enjoy them was to put them on the light table and viewing them through a loupe. Unlike my 35mm and 120 slides, I have never seen them projected big simply it is not easy to locate a 4×5 slide projector.

For the last few years, I tried searching online on how to do it yourself (DIY) and build a 4x 5 slide projector but no one seems to have made them before.   There are commercially produced 4×5 slide projectors although I have never seen one in real life. I have not even seen them on the used market on eBay before but even if they are available they are going to cost a lot and even more to ship.

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You can make a high-res microscope with an iPhone camera and Lego

There’s an unlimited number of things you can make from Lego. So far, we’ve seen working cameras, lenses, and camera sliders, and you can even build a microscope. That’s exactly what a group of researchers in Germany did. They turned an iPhone 5 camera module and some Lego bricks into an affordable microscope and ended up with some impressive results.

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This Arduino-powered DIY camera slider has a joystick remote control

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DIY camera sliders come in all shapes and sizes… Well, sizes, anyway. They’re usually all a pretty similar shape. Long poles along which a platform moves. But this one, I thought, was particularly interesting. Not all of the information has been released on it yet, although it’s expected to be teased over the next day or two as the video gains more attention.

It was posted to YouTube by MERT Arduino & Tech and like many DIY sliders, it’s powered by an Arduino. What makes this one stand out particularly, though, is that it features a joystick remote control, letting you operate it from afar without having to touch it.

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This guy made a wrist cam from a broken 35mm film camera

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Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami has a limited budget, but unlimited imagination. We’ve featured some of his awesome DIY projects, and he just shared another one with us. He gave a new life to a broken 35mm camera and turned it into a wrist cam. It doesn’t only take photos, but it looks pretty good, too!

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Follow these tips to nail handheld shots with telephoto lenses

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Using telephoto lenses handheld can be quite challenging and it may not be easy to get a sharp photo without a tripod. They’re also bulky and heavy, so it can be difficult to even hold them for extended periods of time. But there are ways to make your life easier and your photos sharper even if you don’t want to use a tripod. And in this video, Leigh TheSnapChick will share them with you.

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Run all your gear on location with this 1200 Watt DIY portable power station

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Portable power for use on location is always a fascinating topic. Over the last few years we’ve seen more battery-powered portable strobes from companies like Godox and Profoto, USB power banks are ridiculously cheap, and we’ve even seen ones that can put out 120-240v AC. Some of us also have our own solutions for powering gear on location.

But have you thought about building your own portable power station you can take out on location to charge or power your kit? If so, this one from Matt at DIY Perks should interest you. It’s capable of supplying up to 1200W to charge or power pretty much anything you might want to throw at it. Even a microwave!

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The homemade DIY filmmaking gear Van Neistat can’t live without

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You might be forgiven for not knowing who Van Neistat is, but as the name might suggest, he’s the brother of filmmaker and YouTuber Casey Neistat. After their HBO series, The Neistat Brothers, the two took very different paths. Casey went full-on into YouTube and Van… well, he kind of disappeared. Recently, however, Van’s done an about-turn and finally created his own YouTube channel.

It’s filled with some pretty unique stuff compared to most of the content we see on YouTube these days and it still has that very raw feeling of Casey’s early YouTube videos and the work the pair did together. In his latest video, Van talks about some of the DIY camera gear he’s made for himself and how he finds it invaluable.

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Why do Pros never own the latest and greatest gear (and why their gear is in such bad shape)?

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One of the staples of professional photographers on the internet is the latest and greatest kit. With Peter McKinnon using the R5, and Jared Polin (constantly) switching brands,  it is easy to think that in order to be a professional photographer you need the latest and greatest kit. However, that is not always the case, here’s why.[Read More…]

Powering a camera for a month-long 24/7 timelapse

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Long term timelapses are a lot of fun to shoot, but they can come with a lot of challenges. What happens if your gear gets stolen or damaged? What if it simply moves and you lose your framing? Or stops shooting entirely? It’s a constant learning experience of challenges that we have to figure out as we face them.

But probably the biggest challenge is that of power. For Oklahoma farmer Derek Chisum, who wanted to shoot timelapse of his peanuts growing up out of the ground in his field, the solution is simple. Hook the camera – a GoPro in this case – up to a car battery. Derek spoke to DIYP about his setup.

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Keep your Godox flash trigger LCD safe with a cheap plastic business card box

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Despite now having about half a dozen triggers available for the Godox flash system, the Godox XPro still seems to be the most popular. I have six of them myself so that I can use all my Godox lights with different brands of camera. The main attractions for the XPro are the easy access to settings due to the array of buttons and that huge LCD.

But in the rough and tumble of location shooting where gear often just gets thrown into a bag, that big LCD can become a liability. Photographer Mark Ratcliffe at Pixapro, though, has found a solution to help protect your trigger in the bag no matter what. And if you’re doing photography as a business, you may already own what you need!

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