DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

 

Submit A Story

Photographer turns $200 camper into a giant camera and portable dark room

by 4 Comments

When you have imagination and skill, almost anything can become a camera. Photographer Brendan Barry is skillful and loves to build cameras, so he bought an old camper trailer off eBay for £150 (around $200). After some work, it became a giant, functional, and a rather stylish camera.

Other than taking photos with it, this “camper camera” doubles as a portable darkroom, so he can take and develop his photos anywhere. And just like the regular camera, he can always bring this one with him. If there’s a place to park it, though.

Brendan shared some details about his awesome camera with us, as well as the photos he took with it. It’s not just the camera that looks beautiful, but the portraits Brendan took with it are amazing, too.

[Read More…]

Professor turns the entire classroom into camera obscura

by 3 Comments

When you’re a teacher, all the knowledge you have is not of too much use if you’re not creative. Mark Zimmerman, an associate professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, is exactly the kind of teacher I admire. In order to explain to his students how a pinhole camera works, he didn’t just bring one to the class. He went a step further and turned the entire classroom into a camera obscura.

[Read More…]

This photographer makes images from inside his camera

by Leave a Comment

Most of us hold our cameras. Or mount them on a tripod. Either way, most of us are on the outsides of our cameras. For Canadian photographer Ross den Otter, though, stepping inside his camera is exactly how he makes his portraits. Needless to say, it’s a rather large one.

Ross uses a camera obsurace. Essentially a large room with a hole in one wall. In this hole a large format lens is mounted, which projects the outside scene onto a wall on the inside. Using photographic paper, one can capture that projected image. Because of the nature of a camera obscura, Ross was able to also use it as his darkroom. This meant that paper could go straight from the wall to the developing tray. A few minutes later, he could emerge with the finished print.

[Read More…]

World’s Largest Negative Was Exposed In A Camera Obscura Built Inside A Vacant Storage Facility

by 1 Comment

Joel Nicholas, a Vancouver based photographer, has been up to something really cool. He’s been working on a photo series called Blueprints for Observation, where he transformed an old downtown self storage building into four different camera obscuras: one each on a north, east, south, and west facing wall. The storage facility was destined to be demolished, which provided Nicholas a little more freedom to really take his build to the next level. By building blacked out rooms on the interior of the storage facility and drilling a tiny aperture into an 8-inch thick wall of reinforced concrete, Nicholas was able to capture a near 360-degree view of Vancouver using his gigantic “disposable camera”.[Read More…]

The Focal Camera Is An Awesome Open-Source DIY Modular Camera System

by 1 Comment

The Focal Camera project is looking to make the art of building a DIY camera accessible to masses, and their open source catalog of templates and instructions is making it happen. The modular system works much like the way Legos work–meaning the individual components of a camera are each made separately and can be used together in a variety of ways.[Read More…]

How To Build A Room Sized Camera Obscura (+ Timelapse)

by 7 Comments

We heard how dangerous it could get outdoors with all the traffic-crossings, pollen, rays of UV and so on, so we decided to stay inside and paint our walls with a live stream of the outside world…

For those less familiar with such witchcraft, this phenomenon is known as ‘camera obscura’…

First decoded by none other than legendary Arabic scientist, Alhazen, the surreal projections of light through a pinhole have been observed across a myriad of generations, eras and cultures – Today it is observed on DIYP.

Using no more than materials essentially considered rubbish, is it astounding to realize this simple manipulation of light we currently bask in is what eventually lead to development of the device currently reshaping the landscape of art (and spurred this DIY culture):
[Read More…]

Recent Posts