Remember the Canon Hacker’s Development Kit, aka CHDK—the open-source firmware that turns your point-and-shoot into a super-camera? Here’s how bug enthusiast Tim used CHDK and DIY ingenuity for better macro results from his point-and-shoot. Spending more money was off the table for Tim’s spending budget, so rather than pony up for some new, expensive equipment, he turned to the wonder of open source. His setup is a little heady if you’re not familiar with the subject, but Tim used a reverse mounted lens technique along with the focus bracketing feature of CHDK. The results—one of which you can see in the screenshot—speak for themselves. If this project doesn’t quite appeal to you but you are interested in getting a ton more functionality from your standard Canon point-and-shoot, check out our guide to getting started with CHDK.
My setup [BugGuide.net via Hack a Day]What’s panning? It’s the photo technique that seems to freeze an object in motion against a blur of background movement. Slowing your shutter speed is the heart of a good pan and critical to creating a motion blur: The actual shutter speed depends on the speed of the subject but generally it will be 1/200th or slower. 1/200th if your subject is really flying along, like a speeding car on a race track, and maybe as slow as 1/40th of a second if your subject is a runner on a track.
Steady hands or a tripod with a nice ball head are a must for a smooth pan. For more tips and example photos, check out the rest of the tutorial below. Photo by tinou bao. The Art of Panning [Digital Photography School]
Ring flashes fit around the barrel of a camera lens to provide an even and diffused light—and they often cost upwards of $200. Spare yourself the expense with a DIY model. Ring flashes are great for macro photography, as the light comes from all sides of the lens and provides extremely even illumination on your subject. They can also be used for interesting effects in portrait photography. Unfortunately the high price point makes it entirely uneconomical to pick one up just to mess around with photographing ants or casual portraits. Over the the website Fring—short for Fibre Optic Ring—there’s a detailed tutorial for taking about $5 worth of parts from your local cheapo store and turning them into a tool that channels your on-board flash’s light onto the rim of your lens. If you’re dabbling in macro shooting, it’s a great way to try out ring-flash style lighting without breaking the bank. Fring – DIY Fibre Optic Ring Light [via Hacked Gadgets]
Windows only: Hailing from the camp of “do one thing exceedingly well”,” Batch Image Resizer is a small utility for speedily batch processing your image files. Bulk Image Resizer supports popular image formats like JPG, PNG, BMP, and GIF among others without any limitation on file size. The documentation for the program describes the resizing method as a “high quality distortion-less image resizing.” While “high quality” isn’t exactly a scientific measure, during testing, our resizing results were comparable to other resizing applications, and reasonable upscaling had good results. If you have a multi-core processor, the application is optimised to use it for speedier processing. One small but handy feature is the ability to pull source images from multiple directories at once, rather than demanding a folder-by-folder run. Batch Image Resizer is freeware, Windows only.
Bulk Image Resizer [via Freeware Home]Beauty dishes are great flash modifiers for portrait photographs, but even a cheap model will set you back at least $100. Skip it—a surprisingly effective DIY beauty dish costs less than $20. The F-Stops Here photography blog posts a project by David Tejada that combines a plastic salad bowl, en empty CD spindle, a plastic downspout attachment for a gutter, and a $3 convex mirror from an automotive store. The result is a thrifty beauty dish with incredibly polished looks. While he built his specifically for his Nikon SB-800 flash, his design would work well with any large flash and can be easily modified for smaller rigs. If you build the dish and want more flexibility with flash placement, research how to extend your flash cord using Ethernet to give yourself more creative room. DIY Beauty Dish [The F-Stops Here]
What’s a bokeh you say? It’s that oh-so-wonderful fuzziness in the background of photographs with a shallow depth of field and accompanying starry highlights. You can create you own bokeh effects with a little craftiness. The term bokeh is an anglicised version of a Japanese word used to describe the portion of a photograph that is out of focus behind the area of principal focus in a picture. When you see a portrait that has a creamy soft background and a nice crisp focus on the person being photographed, you are seeing bokeh. The shape of the highlights—sometimes round, hexagonal or other geometric shapes—is determined by the shape of the aperture in the lens.
iPhone/iPod touch only: Ever with you could print a picture from your iPhone without going through the hassle of syncing, locating, and printing the picture? Air Photo wirelessly prints any photo from your iPhone with two taps. The application works in conjunction with an Air Photo Server app that runs on your Windows or Mac PC. Assuming the server is running on your desktop, printing a picture from your iPhone is dead simple: Just launch Air Photo from your home screen, pick the picture you want to print from your camera roll or other albums, then simply hit Print. Air Photo takes care of the rest. Naturally, the iPod touch doesn’t actually take any pictures of its own, but Air Photo is still capable of printing any pics you’ve synced to your Photos. It may not be something you’ll use every day, but it’s a really cool little trick—essentially bringing PictBridge-like functionality to the iPhone. The Air Photo Server is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X; the Air Photo iPhone app will set you back $US1.99 from the iTunes Store. If you’re an HP inkjet user, check out HP iPrint Photo, a free iPhone app with the same goal that only supports HP printers.
Air Photo Server Download [Sudobility via Download Squad] Air Photo [iTunes Store]Collagr is a web based application that creates collages from photos uploaded to Flickr and Photobucket. You can use your own photos by plugging in the URL for the directory into Collagr or use search terms—the sample here was generate from a search for red roses. Once Collagr has grabbed images from the URL you supply, you can tinker with settings like the background colour, spacing between pictures, the resolution of the output, and you can apply a grayscale or inverted colour filter to the image. Collagr hosts the image once it is generate, you can either download it or use link to the unique URL that is generated. [via MakeUseOf]
A user at DIYPhotography.net was faced with a dilemma. He wanted to outfit his camera with an L-bracket to increase stability while doing portrait photography but he couldn’t find a mount for his camera he liked. The only mount he could find specifically for his camera was $US130 and obscured the camera’s battery compartment door which irked him. Faced with the prospect of paying over a hundred for a hunk of metal with a design he didn’t even like he looked into making one himself. He found a metal supply shop that would accept small orders, in this case speedymetal.com, and ordered a small piece of pre-bent aluminium. After receiving it he used some inexpensive tools like a power drill and a hole tapper to set up the mount holes. His total expenditure for a the project including the raw materials, a new drill bit, and a hole tapper was $US30, a substantial savings over $US130. For more simple DIY camera equipment, check out the DIY camera stabiliser. DIY L-Bracket [via Make]
If Santa left a new digital camera under your tree this year, our gadget-crazed sister blog Gizmodo offers several great tips for getting the most from your new digital camera. The tips range from extremely simple to some more advanced advice, but every tip is worth its salt, especially if your photography know-how is limited to: 1) Point and 2) Shoot. If you’re a seasoned snapper, share your best tips for digicam beginners in the comments.
