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Matthew Perks

How to build your own DIY triple-display laptop to maximise your editing experience

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Triple display laptops have almost sort of been a thing since 2017 when Razer first showed off their then-top-secret triple-display laptop to Linus Tech Tips at CES. Those early prototypes were stolen and somebody was even caught trying to sell them, but they’ve kind of disappeared ever since. There haven’t been any commercially available laptops with triple displays, and most DIY solutions are a little brutal at best.

There are some bolt-on solutions to turn your regular single monitor laptop into a triple monitor machine, but Matt at DIY Perks thinks he’s come up with his own ultimate solution. Naturally, it’s a DIY job, and it actually seems to work pretty well. Matt’s trick is to change the aspect ratio of the displays, going to a pair of vertical iPad displays instead of adding a pair of horizontal screens.

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This crazy looking DIY camera gives the full frame FOV and DOF equivalent of a 35mm f/0.4

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You can’t beat a good DIY crazy camera and they don’t get much crazier than this. Built by Matt at DIY Perks, this particular camera features a 432mm f/5 episcope lens with an image projection circle of around 500mm in diameter. To give you some idea of scale, your average full-frame lens has an image projection circle with a diameter of at least 43mm. That’s an area of 0.015 square meters. This lens has an image circle of 0.785 square metres (~50x the size).

And with this huge projection also comes a big advantage when it comes to depth of field. Despite being a 432mm f/5 lens, it offers the equivalent field of view and depth of field as a 35mm lens would on a full-frame camera if it had a maximum aperture of f/0.4. The closest lens to this designed for the relatively small full-frame format is the Zeiss 50mm f/0.7, and the last one of those to sell was rumoured to fetch around $200,000.

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Here’s how to make your own high quality DIY USB microphone for voiceovers and streaming

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There are a lot of microphone options out there these days. Since stills cameras started being able to shoot video, and particularly so since the whole mirrorless thing took off properly, it seems like every company out there is making microphones now. Even DJI’s getting in on the game. Btu you’re still going to pay a not-insignificant amount if you want a decent one.

So, how can you get quality on the cheap? Well, you can build your own. In this video, Matthew Perks walks us through building our own microphone from scratch that produces some great quality sound. And you can even plug it straight into your computer’s USB audio ports for digital audio.

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Run all your gear on location with this 1200 Watt DIY portable power station

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Portable power for use on location is always a fascinating topic. Over the last few years we’ve seen more battery-powered portable strobes from companies like Godox and Profoto, USB power banks are ridiculously cheap, and we’ve even seen ones that can put out 120-240v AC. Some of us also have our own solutions for powering gear on location.

But have you thought about building your own portable power station you can take out on location to charge or power your kit? If so, this one from Matt at DIY Perks should interest you. It’s capable of supplying up to 1200W to charge or power pretty much anything you might want to throw at it. Even a microwave!

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This guy liquid-cooled his Canon EOS R5 and beat the 8K overheating issues

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The Canon EOS R5, despite receiving firmware update to help reduce the chances of it happening, has a thing for overheating when shooting video. Every single piece of (admittedly, circumstantial) evidence points to it being a timer that’s hard-coded into the camera and not really based on the temperature inside the camera at all. Or is it?

Matt at DIYPerks decided to have a go at liquid cooling his shiny new $3,900 Canon EOS R5. And after doing tests using the original firmware, he saw the results we all expected. The camera shut down right at the time limit, despite being cooled pretty much to the ambient room temperature. When he installed the v1.1 firmware update, though, everything changed.

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How to build your own realistic artificial sun with soap and a satellite dish

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Simulating daylight with artificial lighting is not a trivial task. You’re faking a light that’s 93 million miles away. That means it’s an extremely tiny light source with light rays that flow almost parallel to each other, which has a huge effect on the shadows. But that’s not the only factor in daylight. There’s also that blue sky.

So, how can we set about reproducing it realistically? Well, Matt over at DIY Perks has a solution which, naturally, is a DIY one. And it does it by recycling an old satellite TV dish and combining it with a high powered LED (he recommends this one if you want to try it for yourself). It’s an absolutely fascinating approach that looks a lot more at the actual science of daylight than most photographers and filmmakers do.

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Here is the world’s most powerful video LED blowing up a power supply

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LEDs are getting more capable and more powerful every year. And this one claims to have the crown at the moment as the world’s most powerful COB LED designed specifically for video use. It costs an insane $1,350, requires 1500 Watts of power, it’s 5600K daylight and has a CRI of 95+. As an LED addict, Matt at DIY Perks managed to get his hands on one to test, but in doing so, he blew up two power supplies.

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How to turn a broken LCD TV into a DIY LED light panel

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One of the things I love the most about DIY projects is that they can give a new life to the items that are destroyed beyond salvation. In this video, Matthew Perks of DIY Perks will show you how to repurpose a broken LCD TV or monitor and turn it into an amazing LED light panel. It almost perfectly simulates daylight, and it’s useful for photographers as well as filmmakers.

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How to build your own colour-changing DIY studio lights

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There are no two ways around it, high quality continuous LED lights are expensive. When you need a good amount of light and a high CRI that passes all the necessary certifications and safety checks, that’s just the way it is.

Sure, there are cheaper LEDs out there, but they’re often not very good. They have colour issues or aren’t very powerful. But if you’re handy with tools and a soldering iron, there may be a better, inexpensive DIY option, as this video from Matt Perks illustrates.

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This 1,000 Watt LED light is so bright it can turn night into day

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So, just how bright is a 1,000 Watt stadium LED light? Well, Matt Perks wanted to find out, so he got one. And, as it turns out, it’s pretty bright. It’s not every day you get to see something like this up close and personal, and it’s interesting to see how a massive powerful light like this is constructed.

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