What is your best diy or hack?

[wyogirl]

This month at my photo club we are discussing diy's, photography hacks and inexpensive gear options. What are your best hacks, diy's or the best cheap gear that you have used and know it works??

 

[PaulWog]

It's not exceedingly convenient, but extension tubes with manual focus are nice. Works well with my 85mm 1.8G. Less than $20 for high quality macro (but no autofocus).

** I should note, you have to play around with your aperture manually as well. My extension tube automatically sets the aperture to max when it's fully snapped on to the lens. So I loosen it up just slightly to close my aperture down as needed.

 

[480sparky41 41]

My DIY Trek Pole to SelfieStick/Monopod Adapter Project

The TrekPod has arrived!

 

[Designer]

Not "best", but certainly cheap. I use a recycled gym bag as my photographic gear bag.

 

[EIngerson]

My free Speedlight grid. Made with a beer cozy and black straws.

Coozie grid-1 by Eric Ingerson, on Flickr

 

[mud711]

I have purchased shower curtains & blankets for backdrops........a black towel for close up photos......made a backdrop frame out of pvc...........cardboard box for a light box using desktop lamps.......plastic clamps.....small christmas lights.......the big box hardware stores have tons of stuff that can be used for photography.......foam insulation board for reflectors.......light panels for diffusers........purchased a sheer shower curtain for a diffuser.......

 

[EIngerson]

This beer bottle shot I used black foam board and poked christmas lights through it. Pushed it about 10 feet behind the bottle and made a nice effect of pouring. Wish I'd have lit the bottle better and had the label visible. But you can use this idea for a ton of applications.


Lights by Eric Ingerson, on Flickr

 

[andrewdoeshair]

Not exactly a hack or a home made gear thing, but something that's been crazy helpful to me is whenever I have to charge a battery on location I take a picture of the charger plugged into the wall, and then set that picture as my phone's wallpaper. I've left like 3 batteries and chargers behind in the past and since I started doing this I haven't done it. Every time I pull out my phone it's a reminder to grab my battery.

 

[MRnats]

A ring light I made for under $20.

 

[EIngerson]

I don't have one to show, but instead of buying a $70 lens calibration tool I print out a sheet of the letter "w" and put an "X" in bold print dead center for a focal point. Put your camera on a tripod and follow the process as you would any other. Boom, free calibration tool.

It works great.

 

[otherprof89 30]

This month at my photo club we are discussing diy's, photography hacks and inexpensive gear options. What are your best hacks, diy's or the best cheap gear that you have used and know it works??

Almost 50 years ago, a friend and I were asked to photograph a rock band for a possible album cover or poster. We were thrilled, and to make it seem professional we borrowed all the equipment we could from friends. We probably had six cameras loaded with all sorts of different types of film. We had the band out in different locations in NYC all day. The problem was, we forgot to change the asa settings for the different films, and wound up with two uusable rolls of slides.
As we all know, necessity is a mother. We did everything we could think of with those shots to make a full presentation.
My favorite hack was to hold a match close to the slide until the emulsion bubbled. Damn if they weren't impressed by the psychedelic images! Another was to contact print a slide onto Kodalith (ulta high contrast) film, and then sandwich the two images together slightly unaligned. Three-D! Lately, I've tried showing some prints upside down. I'll look for one that works and post it. Thanks for jogging some great photography memories.

 

[nerwin]

This is my photography hack I made out of spare parts from my LED junk drawer. Cost: $0.00.

So the LED panel came from a Husky LED work light that broke. Its a pretty dang bright LED panel, my batteries are probably a little worn since I use it often. But it last quite a while on two 9V batteries.

It works really well and light spread is pretty good, It covers a big area and the color temperature is good..not super white or blueish like a lot of LEDs. Its like a warm cool. Probably around 4500k.

I even tapped the metal for 1/4-20 thread so technically, I could attach this to my hot shoe and use it as a video light. Its not too heavy, probably lighter than some of the video lights.