Check out freerobotpants‘ simple and effective hack for adding spool tension to Diana toy cameras: tape!
Category: Camera Hacking & DIY
Tin-foil-lined Holga
Ever wonder what happens when you line a Holga with aluminum foil? Me too!
I crinkled the crap out of it to hopefully get lots of light bouncing around in different directions, and lined the camera, shiny side out. The irregular vignette is because I wasn’t very careful about leaving the edges of the light path clear.
I expected the lowered contrast, but was thinking I might get some random specular-type highlights. Nope. Of the whole roll, this is the only frame that had a visible artifact (the white wavy form near the top). But this does show that you can easily control the shape of your vignette, just take the back off and put some crap around the square hole you can see the shutter through.
If you care, this is Kodak T-Max 100 developed in Diafine.
Clever improvised ring light
This only works in low light when you’re shooting near your computer, but if you are, this technique outlined at DIYPhotography.net gets points for bricolage style, cheapness, and ease of use.
How to fix a Holga’s corner double exposure issue
There is a fairly common shutter issue with Holga toy cameras that creates a slight double exposure in the bottom right corner of the frame (see above).
See what causes it and find out how to fix it at Squarefrog’s excellent Holga resource site, Holgas Online.
Diana dissection photos
Wanna know what the guts of a Diana toy camera look like? Sean Rohde has the answer!
Lightning activated camera shutter trigger
FC writes:
This circuit is used to trigger a camera’s electronic shutter circuit when a flash of lightning is present. This circuit would also work for photographing fireworks displays or other events involving flashes of light. In a nutshell, the photo darlington converts light pulses into electrical pulses, the first LM324 section amplifies the electrical pulses, the second LM324 section is a high pass filter that only passes quick changes (lightning). The third LM324 stage is a comparator that allows only large pulses to pass through, and the 4047 one-shot stretches out the length of the pulses so that they are long enough to drive the relay and trigger the camera.
Continue reading at SolOrb.com (includes schematic)
Via MAKE Blog
Roundup: 10 disposable camera mods
Check out this roundup of disposable camera hacks at DIY Live.
Via MAKE Blog
Architect’s lamp as positionable strobe stand
Check out Mike Gannaway‘s sweet as flash stand hack! More mounting info on the photo’s page on Flickr.
Via Strobist
Razzledog’s prototype 4×5 SLR
Australian Polaroid-to-4×5-rangefinder camera modifier Razzledog built a prototype 4×5 SLR! He says:
I have long had dreams of building a 4×5 SLR……so this prototype is currently under review. The advantages are finally the image is right side up, so I no longer have to stand on my head….. I don’t have to worry about any parallax issues so I get perfect framing without fear of any cropping……and interchangable lenses are no problem. It has bellows so awesome macro is also permissible…
Continue reading and check out photos at Razzledog’s site.
Adventures in year-old DIY C-41 chemistry
See what happens when alspix—the man who brought us the now-legendary matchbox pinhole camera—processes film in year-old, over-used C-41 colour negative chemistry from a DIY kit. The results are surprising!
Read about it at Alspix Stuff.
He used this Nova C-41 kit, which is available in the UK. For those in the US, check out the variable time, variable temperature Arista quart and gallon C-41 kits, as well as pint, quart, and gallon E-6 (slide/positive/reversal) kits from Freestyle Photo.