It would be very pretentious of me to declare that looking at the photographs and diagrams below will teach you how to light. That said, looking at the photographs and setups and trying to understand the motivation behind the lighting will give you a good start when dealing with similar lighting dilemmas.
You can always come back to this post to see how a particular image was lit to make a similar setup or to use it as a stepping stone for your own.
DIYP has covered shaped bokeh from any possible angle, this is why I was surprised to see that we actually never did a tutorial on converting a lens cap into a bokeh holder. To rectify this, Nadine Spires shares how to easily make a holder like this.
The idea came from Pompo, where the author used a lens cap to make a rectangular Bokeh shape.
I wanted something that was easy to set up and didn’t interfere with the zoom mechanism of my lens, the natural choice was a lens cap.
Do you find that producing sharp macro photographs is hard due to the super limited depth of field? The way to get around this is to take multiple images with different focus points and stack them together. A tidies work, no doubt.
Macro photographer Domjan Svilkovic was kind enough to share a setup that needs nothing more than a camera, a micro controller, a bunch of cables, a computer, an old DVD an old floppy drive and some basic electronics. OK, that’s a lot of stuff, but considering that the alternative for an automated rails are in the high $100s range, it may very well be worth the extra effort.
Now, just before I hand the floor over to Domjan, beware, this is going to get geeky. And by geeky I mean that you need to have some previous electronics know-how (or better yet, ask a friend).
If you’re into ring-flashes, this should be one of the most fun projects ever. It mixes together some paper, glue, scissors and, of course a strobe to print and then fold your ring flash.
I’ve got a very happy announcement today. DIYP is releasing its first eBook – Home Studio Photography: Your Complete Guide To Building A Photography Studio At Home.
It’s a long name, I know, yet it grasps the essence of the book, providing a full, comprehensive reference book for building a Photography studio at home. You can grab a copy here, or read the details after the jump.
Light painting is the process of using one or more light sources to fill in a single exposure to create a unique image. If you think of the light like a pencil to paper and then add tools like a Spirograph to the situation you might understand what exactly I am doing.
The light wheel is actually pretty simple and you can get pretty creative with it on the fly. It is made up of a bicycle wheel (any size, however I have found that a 20” BMX bike wheel is a good size), A set of battery operated LED string lights. (These can be purchased from eBay or if you are lucky around October through March you can pick them up at Target or IKEA (any store that sells Christmas stuff is likely to have them). The lights are attached using black electrical tape and I used a bike peg I had laying around as the handle.
In this article, 55125 will teach you how to build your own light wheel.
Most photographers have seen some of Dr. Harold Edgerton’s work like a bullet shooting through an apple or a bullet splitting a playing card. Back in the 1960′s when Edgerton was taking these types of photos it was quite revolutionary. To take these kinds of photographs Dr. Edgerton had to first invent the modern camera flash. Today duplicating these photos is feasible for just about any amateur photographer who is willing to spend a little time understanding some common high speed photography techniques and some money to buy some specialized equipment. However, the really exciting idea isn’t reproducing his iconic photographs, but having people take creative new high speed photos.
© MIT 2010. Courtesyof MIT Museum
This article is going to show you how to use the Camera Axe and it’s projectile sensor to take some of your own amazing high speed photographs of objects being hit by bullets. At first it may seem that there are only a few objects to shoot, but once you start getting into this field of photography it seems like every trip to the grocery store, farmers market, dollar store, or yard sale becomes an expedition to find new targets.
The $7 beauty dish emerged out of a desire to experiment on the cheap, to see if I could duplicate the effect of a real beauty dish and see if it was worth buying one. Here’s my disclaimer: These are no substitute for real beauty dishes and the details involve more brute force than calculated physics.
My project followed a surprising amount of noodling around in Ikea, Home Depot and Target looking for the essentials — something that would let me fire my Nikon SB800 flash into a reflective bowl and direct it toward a subject. I don’t know if the final solution is brilliance or BS — I’m sure you’ll all let me know.
As you may already be aware, light painting is the process of moving light sources around during a single exposure to create an overall shot. A more specific way to include light forms into a photo is with `light stencils’.
The light stencil itself is made up of two main components – the stencil image, and something to contain the light while you shoot that image. A shoebox works really well (with the stencil picture cut into the lid, and the box used to contain the light); or alternatively, a portable soft box could be used (with the stencil attached to the front of the soft box).
In this article, TigTab explains how to create a light stencil using a shoe box.
Last weekend was kinda slow at work. No shoots, no planned meetings, no post work to do, No open bids. So what do you do? shoot!
I’ve seen plenty of food color in glass shots and wanted to make one of my own. I did.
In this post I’ll share the process of making the photographs.