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Protect your lenses with your own custom 3D printed rugged lens caps

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There are a lot of 3D printed accessories out there for photography and filmmaking. One of the more popular items that people print are lens caps. There are quite a lot of different lens cap designs out there, but most of them have one big problem. They’re entirely 3D printed, including any spring mechanism to lock them onto your lens.

Depending on the material you print with, such as ABS, PETG or perhaps Nylon, this might never be a problem. But if you print with the usual PLA, this can become very weak over time as it’s used. YouTube channel DSLR CNC DIY has a solution, though, with a rugged lens cap design that uses a binder clip arm as a spring for maximum longevity.

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These 3D printed variable extension tubes let you shoot macro with EF lenses on Sony E cameras

Macro is always a popular photography subject. Even if it’s not something you shoot all the time, it’s something that pretty much all of us will have a go at given the chance. But macro lenses are expensive, so it’s not something that a lot of people will try, even if they want to. There are less expensive options out there, though, especially if you own a 3D printer.

We’ve featured photographer Nick Sherlock and his 3D printed extension tubes and macro accessories before, but this pair of extension tubes is particularly interesting. They’re variable extension tubes with ranges of 0-35mm and 50-150mm, designed to let you adjust their length to whatever you need using Canon EF mount lenses on Sony E mount bodies.

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How I made a 3D-printed wigglegram lens from three disposable cameras

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I gotta admit that half of the reason I bought a film camera was to post cool-looking pictures on Instagram, so when I saw these things called “wigglegrams” on IG I immediately wanted to make my own. I found out that they are typically made with a Nishika camera which has 4 lenses to capture 4 separate images, which can be animated into a 3D-looking video.

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This photographer 3D printed a 3D lens for mirrorless cameras

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3D printing your lenses or lens hoods has been a thing for a while, and you can make some cool creations. Well, this 3D-printed 3D lens is definitely one of them. George Moua designed a 3D lens for a digital mirrorless camera, and in this video, Mathieu Stern put it to a test to show you how it works and what you can capture with it.

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RUHAcam is a retro 3D printable digital camera you can make with a Raspberry Pi

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The camera capabilities of the Raspberry Pi took a pretty big leap forward when they released their new High Quality Camera module last year. The then-new module allowed you to finally get full manual control over your exposure, but it also lets you attach CS and C mount lenses (or just about anything else with the right adapter).

It was only a matter of time before somebody built it into a “real” camera form factor, and it actually didn’t take long, as this film-to-digital conversion shows. But now a new project has popped up. RUHAcam. It’s a 3D printable retro-looking camera based around the Raspberry Pi Zero W and it operates just like a regular interchangeable lens digital camera. Kinda.

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Check out these eight 3D printed photo & video tools designed to make your life a little easier

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I put off getting a 3D printer for the longest time. I didn’t want to get one just for the sake of having a new toy that I’d get bored with, so I held off getting one until I felt I had a genuine need for one. Now, I have five – the most recent of which are the Snapmaker 2.0 A350 and its predecessor, the Snapmaker Original, and I find them absolutely invaluable.

I’ve been using them recently to print a bunch of tools and accessories to help me with my photography and filmmaking. Some of them are workflow and organisation accessories while others are actual tools used to create content. So, here, I’m going to talk about some of the most useful things I’ve printed lately.

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I designed my own 3D printed lens hoods because Nikon’s suck

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My dad was into photography. He was a professor at Illinois in Speech and Hearing Science and did a lot of research on cadavers. He did a lot of photography as part of his research, and also enjoyed photography outside work. He had a darkroom in his lab and I had access to that while I was in town.

I always kept a camera or two on hand but was not dedicated enough to build a darkroom in the house. I didn’t really do much with photography after graduating from college. As computers advanced through the years and image editing began to mature, it became clear that the digital darkroom would become a thing. I inherited my dad’s Nikon F4 and a few lenses when he died, so that kind of put me on the Nikon side of the fence.

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The Ligero69 is a 3D printed camera that lets you use Mamiya Press lenses and backs

One of the great things about the proliferation of 3D printers is the amount of cool stuff people are coming up with – especially when it comes to cameras. We’ve shown you a few before, several times, but this pair is particularly interesting. They’re designed for use with Mamiya Press lenses and backs. There’s the Ligero69, which lets you use a Mamiya Press roll film back and the LigeroPress for use with a Mamiya Press Polaroid back.

Designed by Thingiverse user SPRKPLG (aka “Mario M”), the two cameras are designed to be compact and lightweight, while allowing you to shoot with any Mamiya Press, Super 23 and Universal Press compatible lenses. And best of all, both cameras are open source, released under the Creative Commons license.

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How to make a LIDAR driven motorized film carrier

Despite what some people think about LIDAR for cars, in the near future it is foreseeable that this technology will take its rightful place in our daily lives. Not just for cars but with almost anything and everything. We have already seen Apple’s new iPad and iPhone utilizing this technology. I wanted to see if I could use a LIDAR, in its most fundamental function, on a film carrier that is printed on a 3D printer.

After using Espon’s v600 and v700, and DigitaLIZA from lomography, I wanted to make a versatile film carrier that would help digitize film negatives faster and better. We hardly notice it but camera sensors are among the fastest scanners readily available to us. Captured images are read line after line out from a sensor at a rate that even makes 120 frames per second videos possible. And this feature is becoming more mainstream. In addition, the resolution and colour quality that these sensors typically provide are quite amazing today. Therefore, making a film carrier that utilizes these sensors for purpose of digitizing film negatives makes more and more sense when compared to scanners made a decade ago.

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This Canon EF to RF tilt adapter only costs $3 to make

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Well, this is pretty awesome. At least, it is if you happen to own a Canon RF mount camera, some EF mount lenses and a 3D printer. While Canon’s busy coming up with their own adapters, and the competition is releasing theirs, the 3D printing community has been happily doing its own thing to satisfy their needs.

Like, Whomstevest, for example, who’s designed this 3D printable EF to RF tilt adapter. Yes, that’s aright, a lens adapter that converts your EF lens to fit on an RF body and it gives tilt capabilities!

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