Favorite home made photography tools

Photography is such a complex media that it's easy for one to get sucked into the B&H catalog, or midwest photo exchange or Adorama or any other major retailer looking for different things to spend our money on to make our photos better, when if you just boil down the tools into simple categories you realize that many of them can be made very easily and often for free from trash materials!

Now I'm not talking about the core equipment like camera, lens, film/memory (even though I have made cameras from match boxes) but the accessories commonly used in lighting a shot. I've used cheap desk lamps for that one more fill light or rim light, piece of Styrofoam out of the dumpster to be a reflector for a street portrait, house plants for cucoloris', and all sorts of funky things.

What are your favorite DIY photography hacks and how do you use them?

Here's one I really like and use pretty often, a shoot through reflector. I made it from heavy vellum paper, just cut a hole sized to fit the lugs for my lens hood. Now when shooting back lit I can use this for my ambient fill.

Here it is in use, shooting my sea foam B&B essential boar brush. Just happened that when I was free to do this the best light was on the north side of the house and I don't have many windows on that side, but the frosted privacy glass in the bathroom window made for a nice back light.



And the next most common one I use is cereal boxes to make snoots for my flash. Basically just a tube that fits over the flash head to further columnate the light to restrict it's spill. Great for layering lighting in product photography like when you need a label lit and not the reflective surface it's stuck to (think dark paper wine label on shiney glass bottle).


So, what home made pieces if kit do you use and how do you use them?

Gun stock camera support. Customized so my head does not need to be placed in awkward angles to use. Note Quick Release
If I used it today I would probably be shot for carrying a lethal weapon.



Ten or twelve more DIY'ers if you want them.

Mickey

I made a beauty dish for an off camera hotshoe flash. Worked great, but unfortunately came to an early demise on a photoshoot.

I'd like to make a beauty dish for a speed light. What did you use for a reflector?

i made mine from a shallow metal dish. i think it was actually the top of a cheap wok. i used some all thread to position a metal circle that i honestly can't remember what it was from. on the inside of that i used a stick on round truck mirror. the kind you add on to cover a blind spot. then i made a bracket to attatch it to my stand.

I take those metal clamps from Lowes and Home Depot that are about 1” wide by 6” long and put a ¼” 20 screw through with a nut to secure it and put a hot shoe mount on it. Gives you a portable stand you can mount almost anywhere. Need a light high up without a stand in the way? Just clamp it on.

I make my own camera straps.

Likewise and I'm still on a quest to make the perfect straps for my three main cameras (haven't gotten there yet.)

Straps are always fun to make. I made this one out of Vectran line and leather.

Snoots for flashes are always a simple homemade option. Here I used some heavy vellum paper and some tape. Easy to cut down to control the spill I need for the shot.

The flash pointed at the background and the fill flash far right of the frame.

One idea I read for a honey comb grid was to eat somewhere that uses black drinking straws for the soda and steal handfuls of them so you can cut them into short pieces and create a mosaic of pieces of straw to replicate the expensive ones you put in front of your strobes. It'd require a lot of glue and patience though.

They replace something like this
http://static1.discoverdigitalphoto...comb-grid-attached-showing-grid-structure.jpg

I've seen that too. I do want to try it for one of my speed lights.