Make: Online: Photography Archives

Archive: Photography

November 2, 2009

How-To: Light-up camera level

In need of a more visible level for setting up long exposure night shots, zomie made an LED illuminated level attachment for use with his DSLR + Gorillapod setup. Check out his instructable for the step-by-step.

November 1, 2009

Homemade medium format camera

Peter Johansson is building a professional-grade medium-format camera. Like, from scratch. He's about 80% done and has done a wonderful job documenting the build. [Thanks, Billy!]

October 29, 2009

Gummy chromosomes and Cantor set eggs

From photographer Kevin Van Aelst. [via Boing Boing]

October 18, 2009

Kiel Johnson's cardboard twin lens reflex camera

Cardboard art virtuoso Kiel Johnson builds a giant twin lens reflex camera in this time-lapse video. Check out his other amazing cardboard creations on his site. [via Hi-Fructose]

Kiel Johnson

October 16, 2009

How To: DIY photo reflector

Jared from InventGeek begins a series of photo gear projects with his recipe for a 40" pop-up reflector -

So photography is not only a hobby of mine, but also more or less absolute necessity for what I do here on invent geek. That being said I have always been appalled at the high prices for photography equipment and accessories and I find myself thinking that I could make this a lot cheaper than that! Well its time I put my money where my mouth is I guess and finally start equipping my studio with the types of equipment I both want and need to create more consistent and higher quality imagery for our projects. So I have started a new series of projects in preparation to the launch of a new sister site in our how to network for photography, studio and lighting equipment and accoutrement that I am putting together. So we will be doing many projects across the board and wanted to start with something easy and yet worthwhile.

As he notes in the step-by-step - the spring steel fish tape required for the project, can unravel quite energetically when released from its coil - so be sure to protect eyes, skin, and other valuable objects should you give this one a go.

October 14, 2009

K'Nex lightbox tutorial

Kristin Boehm has posted a great detailed tutorial on how to make a lightbox out of K'Nex pieces for product photography. She was digging for the perfect materials and stumbled across a box of K'Nex from her childhood, and the rest is history.

October 10, 2009

Bullet impacts at 1,000,000 frames per second

I'm not entirely sure who made this video. I have this strange intuition it might be someone named "Werner Mehl," and that the video might be copyright 2009, and....somehow, that Werner's website is probably www.kurzzeit.com. Isn't it weird how sometimes stuff just comes to you?

Nikon's Small World gallery

16821 3 Paves
1st Place, 2009 - Dr. Heiti Paves, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia.

How-To: Time lapse movie from photos

Sometimes you want to tell a story that takes a while to unfold. One of the beauties of digital photography is that you are not limited by how many shots are on the roll of film, now you can shoot until your camera's card is full. With the high capacity cards available now, you can shoot a very large amount of high resolution photos and barely fill your card.

In this project, we'll use Windows Movie Maker, which comes bundled with the operating system on many computers. If you have a Mac or Ubuntu machine, keep looking. iMovie surely has a process similar to this, and I haven't found a good way to work with movies on Ubuntu. Add your thoughts in the comments if you know of good software for other other platforms. All the windows machines in my classroom run on XP, I have heard that Moviemaker is a bit harder to find in Vista.

Making movies and sharing them online is a great way for students to sum up what they have learned from doing a project. By using the video description, students have a place to park a written explanation of what the project helped them learn and what the photos depict. They can write the text in any word processor and then add it to the video description when it is uploaded. If they need to alter it later, they can just edit the notes by logging in and making the changes.

Read full story

October 9, 2009

How-To: Copy stand on the cheap

Instructables user Light_Lab writes:

I collect lots of documents as part of my work; recently I decided I should let the sheets of ‘tree stuff’ return to the environment and clear up my living space and office by scanning everything I could. I had recently got rid of a flat bed scanner; it was far too slow and I hardly ever used it. I needed something that was convenient and fast; it didn't need to make ultra high fidelity scans, just readable would do.

Check out the tutorial for this easy and cheap copy stand.

October 7, 2009

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj teardown

Our friends over at iFixIt.com just couldn't keep their screwdrivers and spudgers off of the new Coolpix S1000pj, the digital camera with a built-in video projector. They just had to find out how Nikon fit all that bleeding-edge tech into that tiny camera case.

Here's some of what they discovered in their testing and teardown:

* A room has to be quite dark to view the projector's image properly. We expected as much given the size of the projector, but the image quality is mediocre at best. Anything that's projected looks like it was shot in the '70s.

* Surprisingly, both the front and rear outer cases are machined out of aluminum. It's quite a solid camera.

* The speaker pumps out some pretty solid sound when the camera is in projector mode.

* Like most compact digital cameras with no externally telescopic lenses, the S1000pj's internal zoom lenses move perpendicular to the front face.

* Light has to travel through at least four glass lenses until it shines on the CCD sensor. What a journey!

* Disassembling this camera is not for the faint of heart -- Nikon definitely did not intend this device to be user serviceable. We had to de-solder a bunch of components including the camera cover actuator, projector LED, and flash bulb.

* Light for projecting images is supplied by a very powerful LED that even has its own heat sink to conduct heat to the aluminum front panel.

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj Teardown

October 6, 2009

Software generates photos from your sketches

Too lazy to actually get out and take pictures? Then you might want to check out Photosketch, an interesting research project by researchers at Tsinghua University. Starting with a basic sketch consisting of shapes and tags describing what you want, the software searches a database of images and finds things that will fit.

Their site is suspiciously down, at the moment, however kottke posted a link to their research paper. Hopefully this actually gets released!

[Thanks Stuart!]

October 4, 2009

Water On Lens Exhibition

Lensimagine
Gorgeous underwater photo exhibit...

Name a truly great British film and chances are it was made at Pinewood Studios, the most cinematic landmark Old Blighty has. Its reputation has resonated worldwide thanks to the biggest names in cinema filling its spaces and next month you will be able to get an insight into the craft and guile that goes on in there, when the Movieum of London in the city’s Southbank showcases underwater photographs from movies such as Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, as well as television features and music videos.

October 1, 2009

Gorgeous Delta IV Heavy launch photo

From Gizmodo:

Photographer Ben Cooper took this photo of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket launching at Cape Canaveral using a sound-activated camera. And when your camera is that close to a launch, your lens probably won't survive.

This Insane Photo Destroyed a Camera Lens

Vertical panorama of redwood tree

How do you photograph a 300' tall tree in a dense forest with no clear sight lines? Wildlife photographer Michael Nichols did it by taking a bunch of close-ups using a special camera rig and stitching them together digitally. NPR has the full story. [via Hack-a-Day]

September 30, 2009

Photographing your projects

In this week's Ask CRAFT column, I fielded a reader's question about photographing your projects. It's applicable for all kinds of makers, so go on and check it out!

DIY Street View camera

As part of a course at the United States Military Academy at West Point, maker Roy D. Ragsdale developed a prototype Street View-like camera using a laptop, $300 in off-the-shelf components, and open source software. A Python script captures eight 1280x1024px JPEG files that are then stitched together and uploaded to Google Earth.

Construction was straightforward. On a flat octagonal heavy-cardboard base, I glued small posts for the cameras' clips to latch onto. I aligned each unit and then placed the USB hubs and the GPS receiver in the middle. I secured the cables with Velcro and sandwiched everything with another piece of cardboard. The whole thing's the size of a small pizza box, weighing less than 1 kilogram. Excluding the notebook (a 2-gigahertz machine with 512 megabytes of RAM running Ubuntu Linux), the hardware cost about $300.

[thanks, Erico]

September 25, 2009

How-To: Use hard drives for image stabilization

Instructables user BobS made a gyroscopic image stabilizer from two harddrives and some spare parts. I'll save this one for my next helicopter trip over the Serengeti.

Thermal imaging on the cheap

Stephan Martin writes in to tell us about his homemade thermal imaging system, the Thermoscanner. He mounted a TPA81 thermopile array onto an XY servo mount, then hooked it up to his computer using an Arduino microcontroller. A Processing program is then used to collect data from the sensor and display it in an image.

The resolution is pretty coarse, but it is pretty sweet to be able to make thermal images for around $150!

September 21, 2009

Book giveaway + project excerpt: Photojojo! by Amit Gupta with Kelly Jensen

Photojojo Bookcover
Photojojo! Insanely Great Photo Projects and DIY Ideas by Amit Gupta with Kelly Jensen
Book Site: Photojojo.com/book

The best email newsletter hands down for photography crafts is Photojojo. Thanks to Amit's review one year, I found my Nikon D40 and have been in love with taking photos ever since. Now Amit and Kelly wow us again with their new book, Photojojo! Insanely Great Photo Projects and DIY Ideas filled with 50 projects so you can do more with all the cool photos you take. It's not just about printing them out and making a photo album. This book shows you how to use your photos to make cool things such as a lampshade or messenger bag (pictured below).The second half of the book is like taking a photography class. You'll learn techniques for taking better photos as well as fun ways you can experiment with different photo techniques. I love the tips on how to do digital color correcting after you've taken your photos. If you love taking photos and want to learn how to do more with them, this book is for you!

Photojojo Projects
Book Giveaway Time!
We are giving away 3 copies of the Photojojo! book.Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you need this book. Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (won't be published). All comments will be closed by Noon PST on Wednesday, September 23rd. The lucky winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

Photojojo Photomosaic
Project: Ginormous Photo Mosaics
Even if you are living in an apartment and can't put holes in your walls, you can still get some great art up. Download the project PDF to make this stunning photo mosaic where you'll be able to see the wonderful memories you have of your friend and family.