Archive for Do It Yourself

Building a laser trigger for your camera

There are loads of reasons for why you could want to trigger your camera remotely - to avoid camera shake, for example, or to be able to take a photograph of yourself without having to rely on a timer. If you want to build more ambitious projects, however, you may have to consider getting more exotic. I recently built a little device which triggers my camera whenever a laser beam is broken - It's about as simple an electronics project as you can pull off, but it's going to form the base of a couple of other cool projects I'll be working on going forward (stay tuned...), so I figured I'd do a quick post explaining how I did this.

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Colour illusion

Have you ever wished that you could make it look as if your black and white photos were in colour? Well, through the magical powers of chromatic adaptation, you can! Someone posted a really cool optical illusion on Reddit today, and one of the commenters was wondering how it is done. As it turns out, it's really quite easy, so I decided to tap out a quick little tutorial. Here is how:

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How to clean your dSLR sensor

So you have spent thousands on your camera and you're wondering how to clean it? Well it's a good question to ask; a dirty sensor will impact every single one of your images, as it is - quite literally - the focal point of all the camera's technology. That's right, your hard earned dollars reduced to the mercy of the elements. Scary thought eh? Despair thee not, young padawan, help is at hand... Well, good news! You are in the right place place to learn how to simply, cheaply, and quickly clean your DSLR and get back to the important part; taking photos.

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Nude self portraiture

Taking photos of yourself has a certain under-tone of intimacy about it at the very least; but choosing to shed your clothes and do the same thing adds a whole new dimension to the experience. One of my long-time readers, Brigitte, told me her approach to nude photography; She doesn't share her photos with anyone, but decided to take them for her own sake. It made me think; I know that my blog is quite strongly in favour in sharing all your photos with the whole world, but perhaps that misses a little bit of the point; Who are we, in fact taking photos for? Anyway - that's a topic for another post... Today, it's Brigitte's turn...

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Digital Schizophrenia

One of the first things I started doing when I started shooting digital images, was thinking of ways of doing digital double exposures - adding one part of an image to another - for a greater impact of my digital shots. It turned out to be relatively simple, but carrying high impact. All it takes is suitable photos, a copy of Photoshop (or the Gimp, which is sort-of nearly as good as Photoshop, but free), and a bucket full of time... Have you made any cool images using this method? Post them somewhere on the internet - your blog, perhaps - and add a link to the comments, so we can admire the photos!

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DIY pinhole for dSLR

If you've been around photography for a while, you've probably come across the term 'pinhole'. Basically, it's the simplest form of bending-light-into-the-shape-you-need-it-to-be you can possibly do. A well-built pinhole camera can take gorgeous photos, with incredible depth of field, with a wonderful lo-fi look to them. But what if you can't be bothered getting your hands dirty with sheet film, developing or even having to build your own pinhole camera? If you fancy having a go at pinhole photography while using your trusty digital SLR, then this is everything you need to know to build your first pinhole 'lens'.

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Pan and scan, baby

If your digital camera has just packed it in, or you just feel like shaking things up a little bit, why not consider alternative photography? After all, using a camera isn't the only way to get stuff into your computer for processing... Instead of scanning your prints, why not skip the camera altogether and scan the objects you're photographing?

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Making a killing jar

If you want to get extremely close to insects, you may have to convince them to stop moving somehow. Sadly I have yet to come across tranquilliser darts for bumblebees (if you know of any, post a comment!), so killing them is the only way to persuade them to sit still. {democracy:37} It sounds terribly barbaric, but it isn't, really: If you make one of these jars correctly, you can kill insects quickly and painlessly. If you feel bad about it afterwards, you can always bury it in a tiny grave and sing it a song - make sure you get photos first, though!

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Learn photography step-by-step

I think it's pretty safe to say that I've got a new favourite website: instructables! It uses a flickr-style, very web 2.0 approach to doing 'do it yourself' guides: Hover-over-image items for descriptions of what you are looking at, and many of the instructables available guide you through projects baby-step by baby-step. There are a lot of them available already, mostly for geek projects. Luckily, there are some wicked photography DIY projects as well - well worth a peek!

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Keep the dust off your lens

If you've got a compact camera, you know how bloody annoying it is to have to clean your lens. It's tiny, and it seems to attract dust as if it was a lamp, and the dust were moths, confused by the lovely, bright source of light. Right? Right? Right. There's a ridiculously simple solution worth trying: When you know you're going to be in a particularly vulnerable situation (a desert, a dusty place, or a night on the lash*, for example), you could do some pre-emptive maintenance: Just cover up your lens with a piece of high-quality scotch tape! Important: Obviously, only use the following tip if your front lens element (that's the glass bit) doesn't actually stick out further than the lens barrel. Otherwise, you'll make your lens sticky and dirty and the whole point is gone!

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