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The Easiest DIY Slider I’ve Ever Seen

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Most of you know that I love sliders and that using a slider in a video shoot is a great way to get more value in your video production.

This next slider from pixelriffic is not the fanciest slider, but it is the kind of slider that you can build for about $20, a trip to home depot and one hour of work. It has no moving parts, and everything about it is off the shelf parts (even the felt is precut).

Definitely something to keep in mind if you get stuck without a slider in a parking lot next to a home depot and only have 1 hour till the shoot starts.

How To Shoot A Water Splash With A Spectacular Bokeh

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I am always keeping a close eye on Corrie White’s work. She seems to always have a new trick up her sleeve.

A few days ago I saw Corrie White’s amazing splash with bokeh photograph and was drawn to it. I asked Corrie how she took the image and she was kind enough to walk DIYP readers through it. If you want the more basic stuff, visit Corrie’s Comprehensive Water Drop Photography Guide

Behind The Scenes: Black Light. In The Dark. In A Pool. Over Water

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We are pretty used to Benjamin Von Wong pulling off really inspirational stuff. It seems that each project that he does raises the bar, and this one is no exception. Except that he raises the bar over water.

If you’ve ever done a shoot in a pool, you know that it is not trivial to position a camera over water. Especially when it comes to a $6,000 D4. This is where creativity trumps limitations. Ben has a detailed post about each of the steps that was taken to build this wonderful Water Demons shoot.

Ben goes through the entire sequence of the shoot, not only giving us the actual goods from the shooting day, but starting way back at the concept stage. He talks location selection, sealing it off for lights, teaming up with Jacynthe Tremblay for makeup, and Manuelle Lessard for styling, suspending a D4 over water and focusing it. The works.

Photographer Finds Tattooed Girl By Sharing A Photo Of Her Back On Social Media

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A few weeks back we shared Guy Prives‘s story where he took a picture of a beautiful tattooed girl on the beaches of Costa Rica, but could not sell the image because he lacked a model release.

Being a great photograph, Guy, took an interesting initiative to finding his model, affirming that at-least on our connected world everybody is no more that 6 degrees of separation from anyone else.

Guy harness the power of social media to try and track the girl, using that single image image of her back. Posting on social networks, blogs (even here on DIYP), Facebook and tattoo forums.

Good news!

Make A Dashboard Camera Mount Using A Peanut Sponge

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In preparation for his stoners movie, The Adults, Ben Gill made a pretty simple hack to mount a camera on a car’s dashboard.

This has to be one of the simpler builds I’ve seen, though I would not use it for anything I want to live long. It involves a peanut sponge cut to pressure-fit a camera and a rug pad to keep it from sliding of the dashboard.

Photographs Of Apple Team Found In 25 Years Old Macintosh SE

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Just before I became a full time blogger, I was a firmware engineer at Texas Instruments. If you are using Comcast voice, there is a good chance you are running my team’s code. (Yes, blame me for each and every dropped call)

This is why I found it super interesting that old Macintosh SE computers have secret images hidden in the ROM (read only memory) chip found on every computer.

How To Build A Kick Ass 4 Feet DIY Ring Light

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Ring lights have a very specific light signature. Mostly it is connected with fashion photography as it gives out a very flattering light. The light is coming from around the lens, but since it is symmetrical it seems as if the light is coming right from the center of the lens.

Small strobe powered ring lights can be used for stills but if you want something really impressive, you would go with a huge wooden bulb-driven ring light. While those are a bit harder to transport, they give out a spectacular light that can also be used for video.

(Oh, and make sure to check out those crazy catch lights at the sample pictures at the end of the post!)

Build A Bluetooth GPS Unit For Nikon Cameras

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From the first time I saw the power in geotagging images I was immediately hooked. My Nikon D90 is capable of geotagging, but, unlike the S100 (for example) it has no internal GPS and requires the somewhat pricy GP-1 GPS Unit. I set out to make a better cheaper solution.

I started by doing a lot of research on this topic and it turns out that there is a fairly simple way to connect a receiver to a Nikon camera. Simple, if you don’t mind a bit of makering :)

Impact Master Century C Stand Kit Review

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B&H put the “sent” in century a couple months ago when they mailed me the Impact Master Century C Stand Kit to review.

I’ve been making films in Hollywood for nearly twenty years so I’ve not only used more than my fair share of C (C is for Century) stands, but I’ve also (imagine a hilarious cinematic montage of C stand related violence) tripped over them, received monster finger pinches, and worst of all dropped them more than once on various extremities. Yet despite the abusive relationship I LOVE a well made C stand.

Why? C stands are not exactly portable. Yes, you can move them from one place to another, but they are huge and weigh a ton. But their weakness is also their strength. A well made C stand stays where you put it and can reach for the stars. If you’ve got a huge soft box, movie light, monoblock, etc. that you don’t want taking a dive, C stands are the way to go. Just make sure you sand bag them for safety.

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