Tuesday, June 5, 2007

DIY camera - Dirkon: the paper camera

The Dirkon is a pinhole camera made out of paper (or a more durable card stock preferably matte black). This isn't my idea by any means as pinhole cameras have been around for a long while. Here are plans to make your own Dirkon, just make sure when you print that the scale is correct. It took me a while to put this together and you wouldn't want to spend all that time and then not be able to use it.

I don't have any examples yet, but it was a fun little project to build. I have taken a few frames but haven't gotten the film developed yet. The reason I wanted to build this was to go back to basics, after all a camera is a light proof box with a hole in it.

Monday, June 4, 2007

DIY portable strobe grid

The reason I started this blog was because I came across Strobist, a great site dedicated to giving tips and tricks to other photographers with an emphasis on doing things on the very cheap side. I'm very impressed by the site and encourage anyone who has found my site to check it out.

But one of the things I found that sparked my interest in the DIY photography niche was a spot grid for a small strobe. Here's the link for the strobist article. But I thought about it and wanted to try and make my own, which is what this article is about.

I liked the idea of being able to control the lights and how simple of an idea it is. I changed a few things, but the principle is still the same. I used black straws for my grid, superglued together, and then used some cinefoil (which I already had) to wrap around the grid as well as the flash head. Then I used some tape to hold the foil together and I was done.

The longest part of producing this was cutting and glueing the straws together. However it works fantastically well, which I'll upload better photos of how well it works later. But here are some examples and shots of the final product:

Above: With the grid spot on on camera flash
Below: Without grid on on camera flash

The beginning

After checking out a couple rather helpful blogs out there for the DIY photographer, I kind of liked the idea of keeping track of what I learn through this period of my life and/or career. I also thought that others might benefit from what I hopefully learn myself.

I graduated from college after the first week in May and have been taking it easy since. I'm not complaining, believe me I'm not, I am just starting to get that feeling like I should be doing something with this time. Not that I should have a job, but I should be pushing myself a little more than I am. I know that I have a lot to learn at this point and I figure that I'll make a few mistakes along the way, but with everything that is being put on the photojournalist's list of responsibilities, keeping track of everything may get a bit tricky - hence this blog.

I will mostly be focusing on lighting, but you can expect some web development topics too. If I can get my hands on a video camera, I'll be posting about that stuff too, with perhaps some discussion about audio. (See, this is the "photojournalist" of the future, someone who takes audio, video, {creates websites}, and stills {or maybe frame grabs}.) But I actually look forward to this.

I see it as many tools to tell a story, but the main problem I've heard with all of this (depending on the newspaper) is that the decision for when a tool is used is not necessarily up to the craftsman, but it is up to the editors. I think that the person (photographer/craftsman) telling the story should determine how the story is told, be it through a slide show, a slide show with audio, a video, or a mix of everything.

The first person that comes to mind as an example of what is possible is a friend, David Stephenson, from the Lexington Herald-Leader. I think I've learned more from him in the last year than I did in school in the last three years.

Well, I just wanted to set this up and get it going, hopefully I'll keep up with it.