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Spekular

Now you can 3D print your own DIY Spekular-style lighting kit

Oct 4, 2022 by John Aldred 1 Comment
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Spekular, the lighting system released by Spiffy Gear back in 2017 was a particularly unique lighting system at the time. Offering a modular setup with interlinked joints that would let you chain a bunch of them together in order to create all kinds of rings, triangles, stars and even panels. I have a couple of Spekular kits myself and they’ve been fantastic for creating light in situations where more bulky LEDs and softboxes would have been impossible.

Recently, though, while browsing for something on Printables, I found a 3D printed lighting system that looked awfully familiar. It seems that somebody, who goes by the name of cfaulkingham, has designed a system that basically looks like a mini open source Spekular clone that you can 3D print yourself. What makes this one particularly useful, though, is that it runs on only five volts.

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We are giving away over $12,000 of cinema gear

DIYP cinematography giveaway

Sep 5, 2022 by Udi Tirosh 2 Comments
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UPDATE: This giveaway has now ended. Scroll to the end to see if you won. Huge thank you to our sponsors for the prizes and support.

With IBC starting this week, we are excited to start our traditional IBC cinema gear giveaway. And this year, we have partnered with top brands to give you the best package to kickstart (or elevate) your Cinematography Career.

Among this year’s participating brands are Sachtler, Sennheiser, B&H, SmallRig, Insta360, Prograde, OWC, Spekular, and Tether Tools. For the full list of amazing prizes hit the rest of the post.

All you have to do to participate is tell us the brand of camera you are shooting with.

This giveaway ends on Tueday, September 20th!

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The must have tool for color addicts – the Rosco MixBook

Apr 23, 2021 by Paul Monaghan Add Comment
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Color.  Such an important tool to help bring a time, place, or even emotions into an image.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have something that makes working with color easier? Inside this little package is a new tool by Rosco called “Mixbook“. To help creators pre-visualize gel and LED colors.

Essentially Rosco has digitized the old gel swatch books, as you can see in my reenactment of a Rosco scientist at work. Note the old gels from my swatch book flying around as the new Mixbook arises from the smokey pot.

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2020 DIYP Holiday Gift Guide – Lighting

Dec 10, 2020 by John Aldred Add Comment
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Light is something that plagues us all, whether we’re photographers or filmmakers. There’s either never enough, or it’s coming from the wrong direction, or it’s too hard or soft for what we need. So, we often need to add our own to get that look that we really want. So, with cameras and lenses out of the way, that’s what we’re going to be covering in our lighting gift guide.

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Watch this crazy video combining fire, water, capoeira and slow motion

Apr 16, 2020 by John Aldred Add Comment
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Slow-motion video is a lot of fun to shoot. I’ve been playing around with it myself a bit since recently receiving the Insta360 ONE R, which is capable of shooting up to 200fps. It can be tricky, though. You need subjects that benefit from being slowed right down for a start. And if you’re using artificial lights, you need ones that are flicker-free at the fast shutter speeds required for high frame rates.

Filmmaker Edden Ram recently teamed up with the folks at Spiffy Gear to overcome both of these challenges, bringing skateboarders, capoeira and fire dancers and more together to bring water, light and motion together for a pretty awesome final result.

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2019 DIYP Holiday Gift Guide – Lighting

Dec 13, 2019 by John Aldred 1 Comment
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With cameras and lenses out of the way, it’s time to light your scene. So, you’ll need lights. I’ve noticed a distinct trend over the last year towards continuous lights, so while there are some flashes and strobes in this list, we’ve put quite a few of our favourite continuous LED lights in this year’s list, too.

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How I shot a nightmarish mirrored cat using strobes, constant light and gels

Jan 27, 2019 by Leon Yakobov 4 Comments
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A few days ago I submitted a photo to the new DIYPhotography facebook group, I am very happy to share how it was taken. Feel free to join our community and submit your best shots.

Lately, I have been playing with color gels quite a bit. While this is something I enjoy, I felt I was falling into a repetitive pattern. I started looking for a way to grow above the technique and use colors to tell a story.

Like many good things, my chance arrived part via collaborating and part via accident. My partner in crime was Yael.di . She is an amazing cosplayer. She is also a kick-ass hula hoop dancer, but I digress. One of her customs caught my attention. It is a one-of-a-kind full-body mirror outfit (check it out here).  I thought that this outfit, combined with smoke and colors would tell a good mystery story. Smoke and mirrors, you know. Here is how we did it, or actually did not.

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2018 DIYP Gift Guide – Lighting

Dec 5, 2018 by John Aldred Add Comment
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We’ve had cameras and lenses so far in our 2019 seasonal gift guides, so this time we’re turning towards lighting. Whether you shoot photography or video, you need it. And when the natural light isn’t giving you what you need, you need flash or good continuous lights. There is a wide range of flash and continuous lighting available these days, and here are some of our favourites.

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Introduction to three-point interview lighting

Jul 4, 2018 by Dunja Djudjic 1 Comment
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The three-point lighting is the basic and the best-known setup for portraits, but it’ also the bread-and-butter of interview lighting. Coming to you from Spiffy Gear, this video will show you the basics of three-point interview lighting in a clear and concise way. There’s a breakdown of the setup, and then you’ll see some small additions to the setup that make a big difference.

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How I use my drone Lipo batteries to power cameras, lights and other things

Apr 11, 2018 by John Aldred 8 Comments
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If you’re like me, and you shoot mostly on location, power is an issue. For photography I solved those issues by switching to Godox strobes with light battery packs or integrated batteries. For video, though, power for continuous lights can be troublesome. Or at the very least, expensive. Some lights will allow you to use relatively inexpensive Sony NPF batteries, while others require expensive V-Mount batteries.

I’ve found another solution to my continuous power problem, though. RC lipo batteries. I had a few left over from my DJI Flamewheel F550 drone after the controller was stolen. So, I figured why not put them to good use elsewhere? They’re also great for powering cameras for battery-draining long exposure timelapse sequences, too.

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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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