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Turn Your Smartphone Into an Awesome Macro Camera With This Simple Hack

Aug 7, 2015 by Allen Mowery 4 Comments
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Smartphones are great, whether you’re grabbing quick snapshots of the kids smearing icing on themselves, making a low-budget film (they’re surprisingly good, actually), or immortalizing your visage in a selfie.  But, without interchangeable lenses, one area where they lack is in focal control.  Having this power over your technology is important for things like macro photography.  While there are a variety of hacks for using your smartphone to capture tiny details, some can get rather complicated.

Instructables user Znaffi (we’ll call him Mr. X) shows us how to use a simple water droplet to turn your mobile device into a macro powerhouse.  We touched on this a while back, but Mr. X gives us a full breakdown of this simple and basically-free technique.

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How To Build A DIY Lightroom Gamepad Controller For 1 Buck

Feb 21, 2014 by Guest Author 14 Comments
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I’m a true believer in “laziness is the mother of all invention” and also in “cheapskate is the father of all DIY” – just kidding! My name is Ori, I am an avid DIYer, an electronics (and photography) hobbyist and I’ve got the biggest junk collection you can imagine. Nothing makes me happier than justifying the use of the whole room it takes up. To my wife, that is.

This is a story of how a fun day of carting with my team at work turned into a DIY “Cullinator” for Adobe LightRoom with a Foxconn gamepad that the IT department dumped  (and I happily salvaged) and some sharewares I coaxed to cooperate with one another.

So we were indoor-carting the other day. I was there, as always, with my Nikon D60 and my (incompatible) SB80DX strobe, trying to get all artistic with long exposures and motion zooming while also letting my friends experiment with my DSLR and having fun seeing the look on their faces when they realize they have to put their eye up to the eyepiece…

Anyways, lighting conditions were really poor, very uneven, high iso, with moving targets, a kit lens and a flash that doesn’t even talk iTTL with the camera – a disaster in the making. I came home to discover I have to postprocess 99.5% of the 200-odd photos we all took. I wish I had a ‘cullinator’… hummmm… I do have a gamepad somewhere, don’t I? Yes! This is going to be fun! Googled “macro for lightroom” and I find ‘Paddy’.

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Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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