DPR Forum

Welcome to the Friendly Aisles!
DPRF is a photography forum with people from all over the world freely sharing their knowledge and love of photography. Everybody is welcome, from beginners to the experienced professional. Whether it is Medium Format, fullframe, APS-C, MFT or smaller formats. Digital or film. DPRF is a forum for everybody and for every format.
Enjoy this modern, easy to use software. Look also at our Reviews & Gallery!

Why do you DIY?

hangbelly

Member
Here's a question for all you diyers out there. What makes you take on diy photo projects? For me it's a couple of things,at first it was a matter of cost.Being a broke kid in the '80s,I had to improvise and make my own backgrounds and other equipment. By making my own stuff I found I could save money and get some functionality that the "store bought stuff didn't have. With cheap lights, backdrops,stands ect on Amazon and Ebay,cost isn't as big of a problem. But,I still love to tinker,and build things,and lets face it,most studio equipment are dull. That's understandable.Lights,stands,and most other studio equipment are functional.Made to be used not really noticed beyond the set up.
My interest is in the early days of photography and motion pictures, 1900-mid 1950s. like to make my studio look like it was made during that era.It's not so much about cost. indeed, many of my projects cost more than they would from a store.But they wouldn't have that old-timey look or feel.
So tell me,what motivates you to create your diy projects?
 
I like doing steampunk related works with my camera. If you don't know what steampunk is, it started out with Victorian time frame but overloaded with either modern tech and/or fantasy tech. It is now wider than just the Victorian times.

I've been involved with renaissance faires since the late 1970's, and at one point I was thinking of ways to disguise my camera. I never really did anything in terms of the renaissance faire aspect, but when I discovered steampunk, I have been through numerous 'steampunk' cameras. Usually, I add various microprocessor LED projects as well.

For the big camera box, the central idea is to replace what is in a modern cellphone with steampunk gadgets. Over the years, my mascots (stuffed animal finger puppets that are in costume) have become part of the build. Generally, I try to harken back to the large format cameras with bellows and such.

Here is a picture my wife took of me before I went to the Watch City steampunk festival last May. Note, some of the electronics did not make it to the show.

2022-05-07-10-03-020-steampunk.jpg
  • samsung - SM-A326U
  • 4.6 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/20 sec
  • Center-Weighted Average
  • Auto exposure
  • ISO 1250


Here is a close up of the camera with explanations:
2022-05-08-01-04-006-steampunk.jpg
  • OLYMPUS CORPORATION - E-M5MarkIII
  • OLYMPUS M.12-40mm F2.8
  • 27.0 mm
  • ƒ/8
  • 1/60 sec
  • Center-Weighted Average
  • Manual exposure
  • -0.3
  • ISO 320


The next festival is in 2 weeks. The current box I'm using is starting to fall apart, so I'm hoping to have finished the next generation of the box. I will be moving from the Olympus E-m5 mark I that has been the basis of the steampunk box for the last few years, to move to the Olympus E-m1 mark II. One of the reasons I am moving cameras is with the current E-m5 mark I, I get about 4 hours of runtime using 2 batteries. The E-m1 mark II is a lot easier to power externally, so I'm hoping to incorporate a power bank or Sony NP-F battery to provide more power.

Many of the critters have a little story. Since people use their cell phones to play music, I added the octopus that has a collection of instruments that some find annoying (banjo, bagpipe, harmonica, electric guitar on each tentacle). I tell people her name is Madeline Pomfrey III or MP3 for short. Now, I've thought about it, but I haven't included a speaker yet, because I'm not sure I want to hear it through out the day. Any way if the octopus plays annoying instruments, she should also play an annoying song. As a parent who has taken his child (now 34) to Mouse land (i.e. Disney World) a few times, one song that ranks up as annoying is "It's a small world". I've collected various versions of IASW done by different instruments in case I ever want to go full hog.

I'm also playing with putting an E-m5 mark III or E-m5 mark I into a Speed Graphic 4x5 large format camera.

In the past, I put an Olympus E-P2 inside of a Kodak Pony Premo 5x7 body.

I've also made a 'book of memories' by getting a book box (box in the shape of a book) that has old tymey maps on the outside, and I put my Olympus Stylus-1 inside.

I made what I called a Cambridge camera. I took a Polarid 95A body (the first mass marketed Polaroid) and I put a Raspberry Pi computer in it with the Pi camera. It is called the Cambridge camera, because Polaroid used to use Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA for their headquarters, while the Raspberry Pi was designed in Cambridge University in the UK. Unfortunately, the Pi camera is so bad indoors that I could not bear to use it.

I built a DaVinci helicopter model from a kit, and I had the 2 squirrels on it. The photographer squirrel (Nutzo) was sitting on top of my Olympus TG-2, and and I had an electronic monitor for the painter squirrel (Livenea) from the TG-2, and the idea was Livenea was painting things in real time.

Before moving to the E-m5 based steampunk camera, I used my E-3 and then E-5 as the basis of the camera. However, at 25 pounds, it became too heavy to carry all day. The current E-m5 or E-m1 based camera is probably at 15 pounds, but at some point I will have to downgrade from that.
 
I love it. I've made a couple of camera boxes to hide my camera. One was a civil war era camera, and the others were made to look like an early Kodak box camera and a 1920s home movie camera(which I guess is more dieselpunk than steampunk) Now I'm Working on some studio lighting for a steampunk themed wedding and possibly some conventions next fall.
 
I like DIY for doing off the beaten path things, re-using old things for a new purpose, take a shortcut to a goal by machining a part that helps. This comes together when I want to do repro from old family photos. Or when I get into a science project like the spectral quantum efficiency project, my thread in the forum "Photographic Science and Technology".
 
I typically use DIY when off the shelf solutions are too expensive or fail to meet my needs.
However I have been known to try DIY solutions for things I already have proper solutions for, exploring the DIY options purely for the challenge/fun.
 
I love it. I've made a couple of camera boxes to hide my camera. One was a civil war era camera, and the others were made to look like an early Kodak box camera and a 1920s home movie camera(which I guess is more dieselpunk than steampunk) Now I'm Working on some studio lighting for a steampunk themed wedding and possibly some conventions next fall.
Any pictures?
 
Another thing that I DIY is powering cameras. I've sort of gone down the rabbit hole of investigating how to power cameras externally. This comes from 2 areas, video and the steampunk camera box.

For video, you really don't want to run out of juice while recording. I was the videographer for a small renainssance faire for quite a few years. I would do roughly 6 hours of video on both Saturday and Sunday (i.e. 12 hours of video) when the faire was going on, as well as having a stills camera to take shots of the performers and audience while the video gear was recording. I think 10 batteries was my record without using external power (I would often change the batteries before they were completely drained when I got to a convenient stopping point). I also recorded a theatrical troupe that put on a 1.5 hour show, where I would record the whole show, and then break it up into smaller segments for posting to youtube.

When I do the steampunk camera, I take it all day. In the past, I've typically had the batteries run down after about 4 hours if I had a body that had a battery grip with a second battery. It can take me about 10 minutes to disassemble the box, take out the camera, replace the batteries, and put it all back together again.

So as I've said, I've been exploring various ways to power the cameras. I need to write this up some time.

Another thing that I've done is shutter releases. In the past, I would use an Arduino to mimic the signal of the electronic shutter releases to control the camera. Also for one of the steampunk cameras, I had my camera in a historic box, and I didn't have room for the shutter release cable on the side of the camera. So I rigged up a manual shutter release that fit on top of the shutter button that let me fire the camera. With the newer cameras now having a touch screen that I can configure to set the focus point and fire the shot, I haven't had as much need for DIY shutter releases.
 
Computer Engineer that's been writing code for 50 years and working with embedded systems for 40 years.

A chance to use the other side of the brain.

$67 off Ebay, Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm F1.5 that looked like wax paper.
Full CLA and conversion to Leica Mount using a Jupiter-3 focus mount made of left over parts.
RIMG0017.jpg
  • RICOH - CX1
  • Unknown
  • 27.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/153 sec
  • ISO 400
RIMG0023.jpg
  • RICOH - CX1
  • Unknown
  • 23.7 mm
  • ƒ/5.1
  • 1/133 sec
  • ISO 308
RIMG0024.jpg
  • RICOH - CX1
  • Unknown
  • 8.0 mm
  • ƒ/4.1
  • 1/48 sec
  • ISO 192
RIMG0028.jpg
  • RICOH - CX1
  • Unknown
  • 10.1 mm
  • ƒ/4.3
  • 1/64 sec
  • ISO 308
sonnar_1607_1.jpg
  • RICOH - CX1
  • Unknown
  • 12.8 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/48 sec
  • ISO 400
sonnar_1607_4.jpg
  • RICOH - CX1
  • Unknown
  • 12.8 mm
  • ƒ/4.5
  • 1/45 sec
  • ISO 400
L1003140.jpg
  • Leica Camera AG - M9 Digital Camera
  • Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 (II)
  • 50.0 mm
  • ƒ/1.7
  • 1/750 sec
  • Center-Weighted Average
  • Manual exposure
  • 0.7
  • ISO 160


I've done about 70 Sonnar Contax to Leica conversions like this, they are fully reversible. If the glass from the J-3 is good, convert them to Contax mount. I have a lot of Jupiters with bad glass in the parts bin.
 
Computer Engineer that's been writing code for 50 years and working with embedded systems for 40 years.

A chance to use the other side of the brain.

$67 off Ebay, Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm F1.5 that looked like wax paper.
Full CLA and conversion to Leica Mount using a Jupiter-3 focus mount made of left over parts.
View attachment 2935View attachment 2936View attachment 2937View attachment 2946View attachment 2947View attachment 2948View attachment 2953

I've done about 70 Sonnar Contax to Leica conversions like this, they are fully reversible. If the glass from the J-3 is good, convert them to Contax mount. I have a lot of Jupiters with bad glass in the parts bin.
Nice conversion
 
Back
Top