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.
RUHAcam is a retro 3D printable digital camera you can make with a Raspberry Pi
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.
Check out these eight 3D printed photo & video tools designed to make your life a little easier
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.
I designed my own 3D printed lens hoods because Nikon’s suck
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.
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.
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.
This Canon EF to RF tilt adapter only costs $3 to make
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!
This is how you shoot portraits with a Game Boy camera and a 70-200mm lens
Game Boy camera is most likely not the first choice of portrait photographers. But what about when you pair it with a 70-200 DSLR lens? And you print your images on canvas? Well, Sam McKenzie 3D Printor decided to try it out. Using a simple 3D printed attachment, he added a telephoto lens to his modest Game Boy camera, and the result is actually pretty cool!
This 3D printed doohicky lets you shoot split double exposures with the Instax Mini 90
Split double exposures can be a lot of fun. They essentially involve covering half of the frame and taking a shot and then covering the other half of the frame and taking another – both shots contributing to a single exposure. There are all kinds of ways you can do them, and Lomography even includes a “Splitzer” tool for this with their wide-angle Lomo’Instant camera.
But what about other cameras? Photographer Guillermo Hernandez has designed one of his own for the Instax Mini 90 that he made using his 3D printer which lets you accomplish the task quite easily.
Check out these seven 3D printed photo gadgets you can make yourself
Apparently, you can find quite a lot of amateur and professional photographers in the 3D printing community. And a lot of them have already had the idea to use their 3D printer to make various gadgets and accessories that are either expensive or hard to find. You can produce some amazing things that will make it easier to take better photos for everyone.
In this article, we are sharing some of our favorite projects and simple tips that will simplify things, save money, and generally let you have more fun.
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