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Six Great Swapping Ideas

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With only ten days left to our Something New – A photography Project, I wanted to share 6 ideas for swapping equipment. Swapping equipment provides a great chance to check both new equipment but more importantly to boot your creativity by trying something new and unfamiliar, forcing you to give attention to what you do. Once you’ve swapped and wrote a review you get to enter our prize winning contest – a camera, lens or combo two weeks rental courtesy of BorrowLenses.com.

1. Swap Yellow and Red – If you are a Canon shooter, this is the time to try one of them Nikon Cameras. If you are Yellow, Try a cool Canon. You’ll get a kick out of zooming out instead of zooming in.

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Six Photography Projects You Can Print Or Fold

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1. Printable Flash Gels

After Rosco dropped the axe on their sample gel program, us photographers had to find alternatives. The idea is quite simple, using a transparency sheet and a printer, simply print your favorite gels on the sheet. In the project description there is a PDF with CTB, CTO and Window Green gels – your starters strobist kit. Are the colors 100% balanced, I am not sure, however, it is a quick solution till Rosco comes up with their strobist kit. LINK.

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Double Your Light Stand As A Portable Backdrop Mount System

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In the following article, Martin Kimeldorf will show us how to make a backdrop stand that can be mounted on your I-carry-it-anyway lightstand.

I don’t like to carry a ton of photo stuff. The notion of trucking around 2 lights stands and a cross bar, with backgrounds, plus tripod and additional light stands for off-camera flash…well, it just ain’t me, not at my age. I went into my head-shed and tried to work with an existing light stand (costing $20 $45) and materials found at my local hardware and fabric outlet. I now have a lightweight, portable set up for less than 1/3 the cost of the commercial ones. Plus it is smaller than most being only 6 feet across. I can remain mobile.

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The Headphones Pop Up Flash Diffuser

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In this article Mohamed Talal  shows us how to make a simple diffuser for a DSLR pop up flash.

There are three things that separate this diffuser from other diffusers we have featured before. The first is the total cost – this one really costs nothing.  The second one is the size of the diffusion panel. By using this method you get a nicely sized diffusion panel. Lastly, a quick mod will turn this diffuser to a ring flash.

It is called the Headphones diffuser, but don’t feel obliged to use headphones casing, you can use GI-Joe’s casings, Transformers casings, or just a nice pieces of transparent material.

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Thank You Pool

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Thank you for interacting with other photographers

Thank you for commenting on each other’s notes and thoughts

Thank you for going out, being creative learning, teaching and sharing

Thank you for taking great images (and submitting to the pool – sideshow)

Thank you for reading DIYP

Tramonto (e.celesti) chaos line (/\/\r_/\/\_/\/\ontg0mery) _DSC8749 (matstornberg) 14/52 The Clones. (grilkip) Yogpot Gels (leprechaun947)
Kick It (Brian Auer) [2008-11-27] vapour (RobertsonPhotography) - " I never think of the future. It comes soon enough " - (- Shiphattey -) peace with myself (Victor Bezrukov) Tip Toeing-2 (Marcus W) Happy Thanksgiving (Darren C.)
morning_0680 (rlketcham) Hero or Vilan (Ztarman) Dark side of the furry (bazs_eos) curves of a violin (mawa_73527) Nautilus in venetian light beams (StephenCotterellPhotography) Prince Adam (kangster)
[2008-11-24] coloured swirls (RobertsonPhotography) open (Will Nickelson | Clueless Photog) Drops of Lager... (Adam Raasalhague) Santa Fe I (alextremps) weather proofed 1 (Jake O'Connell) Day 31/365 - Julia Pin Up (herobyday)
Punctuality Was Tilted (Chris Farrugia) 13/52 Le Douche (grilkip) Contained within glass (Matthew Stones) Rubik's bokeh (.MJ.) Ashleigh - Winter Socks (herobyday) immense (Lady Twiglet)
Look closely (Matthew Stones) Wasn't Me.... (Dr|g) Green & Beautiful ([JA] ??) Day 160/365 BBC children in need (Graham Warsap) The brush off (Bald Monk) Rope (JonathanRobsonPhotography.com)
Plain ice (Bald Monk) Julia - Santa Fe Springs (herobyday) THE NEW FISHERMAN'S FRIEND (pattn) Ashlynn (Jon Neftali) Jessica 4 (Dana Lane Photography)

More Photodumps:
– Pool Portraits – A Splash Of People
– Having Fun @ The Pool #5
– Having Fun @ The Pool #4
– Having Fun @ The Pool #3

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Exploring Small Strobes: Going Wireless

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Welcome to this multi-part series of articles on Exploring Small Strobes by Yanik Chauvin from Yanik’s Photo School.

In part 1 on Exploring Small strobes, I looked at why using flash guns instead of the built-in flash and studio strobes. In part 2, I went through the importance of using your speedlight off camera.

What I’ll be going through today, in part 3, is looking at how to trigger and control your speedlights off camera; more specifically wirelessly. You’re probably saying to your self, it’s about time Yanik gets to the practical stuff! And you’re absolutely right! But I had to convince you first! ;-)

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Avoiding The Double Reflection

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On my Ode to my Power Supply Unit post I got quite a few comments about that nasty double reflection. I just had to fix this. The reason for this reflection is that a glass board has some thickness so I got one reflection from the top surface of the glass and one dimmer reflection from the bottom surface of the glass.

I intended to go with the strobist solution of black granite tile when I realized that I would have a hard time explaining my wife why I just had to have a piece of junk I mean a black tile I mean a photography accessory to make my studio complete.

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Speed Links for 11-21-2008

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This last month has been a stressed and wonderful month for me. I am starting to build a house. This is cool for two reasons. The first, I’ll have access to some great industrial / construction / raw locations. 

The second reason why it is so cool is that I’ll get to build a studio in the basement. Yes – after forfeiting my rights to have any say about decorations, room sizes and kitchen appliances, I get the basement for a studio. A good deal if you ask me. The studio will double as kid’s space, but who cares. It is still a studio. It’ll take about 8 to 10 months to build the house, then, expect a studio post. And if you come by, expect some great pizza and cold beer. 

This got me thinking and I have a new site project brewing up that has allot to do with my plans for the studio, so stay tuned.

However, if I look at the coming month, I get (almost as) equally exited with "Something New" – A Photography Project here at DIYP. The project encouraged photographers to share equipment and to discuss it online. We also have some great prizes – some two-weeks body/lens rental courtesy of BorrowLenses.

I see this project as a great opportunity to learn and teach, to go Yellow (if you are red) to Red (if you’re yellow), to go back to point and shoot days or to try some high-end dSLR. It is also a great opportunity do some photography "things" together.You can use this thread to find partners.

Till any of those projects complete, here are some of my favorite readings for the last month  [Read More…]

Something New – A Photography Project

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Here we go again with another project here at DIYP. This time the project has a really cool theme – sharing. In this project, I am going to ask you to pair up with a friend and share a photography experience. I am going to ask you to temporarily exchange a piece of gear and write a review about it. We also have an awesome sponsor for this one with a set of prizes to fit the theme. I am really exited about this one and I hope I can make my enthusiasm catch.

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Two Ways To Get Background Circles

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As you probably noticed, there is a certain background setup I’ve grown to like in the last few weeks.

It is a setup that produces a nice circle in the background. You can see it in the gridspot article, My Ode to PSU and the shot I took to be the icon of the Babies series. You can also see it used on a large scale portrait here.

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