This has been written for a photography group that I participate in, called Birmingham Flickrmeets, where annually we hold a “contraptions meetup” where we would experiment with forms of photography that perhaps we wouldn’t otherwise consider. This made me think about projects and hacks that could be done at using little or no expenditure at all.
The industry has zero interest in promoting this kind of project, there is no benefit for them to promote people to spend less money. However for the typical photographer, being able to try new techniques without a huge investment is useful. When I started exploring photography I did not want to make huge financial commitments into equipment in subject areas I wasn’t sure I had an interest in, so often finding hacks became a fun challenge, often forcing me to really think about the photography.
In the first of these posts, I’m going to explore the hacks involved in portraiture and street photography. Sometimes you may find you’re out and about and just need that little extra zing, or perhaps you want to try something before you make a big financial commitment.
You will need either:
1. Large silver/steel tea tray
Or:
1. Strong piece of cardboard
2. Tin foil
3. Cellotape/magic tape/some form of transparent adhesive
If you have the tray, you’re in luck, it’s a ready made reflector, just make sure it’s not too highly polished or else you’ll effectively have a mirror, not good for reflecting as it can produce rather hard light. For the tin-foil build, it’s pretty straightforward, cut your cardboard to the desired shape and size, then cut foil to match, and stick it all together.
You don't need to buy lenses with special soft focus elements, or even a special filter for it, you can literally scavenge the bits you need to achieve the more or less the same effect. In fact there are many approaches to this one, the idea of some kind of spherical aberration to your image using various filter. These filters work by encouraging more off centre light reach the sensor, usually using a gauze or perforated material. Some techniques will be more destructive than others.
First one is very straightforward and eco friendly too. Simply by placing a piece of sheer tights/pantyhose material (important that you use the sheerer, thinner fabrics), choose a black or grey colour if you want neutral colour balance, whilst coloured tights will give you some colour changes, or filtering effects, and thus may be more desirable for black and white work.
The second is to build a multi aperture soft focus filter, using thin cardboard or plastic, a screw in filter and some black electrical tape. Making sure your cardboard/plastic is slightly larger than your filter size cut them into discs the same diameter as your filter. If you’re using black plastic or card then you can go straight to cutting, otherwise first cover the disc with electrical tape then trim to size. Use the following patterns as a guide to cut your filters, the central hole should be between 1/2 and 1/8 of the diameter of the main filter. Feel free to experiment with different patterns. You can then fit these discs to the filter and remove them when you don’t want the soft focus any more.
Below is a template for these filters, you can simply cut them out, and glue them over the card or plastic you're using, and cut to the printed pattern. It's scaled for 77mm filter rings, you are welcome to download and downsize it to fit your lens
This next method is more destructive than previous, take a filter and drip dollops of clear nail polish onto it, effectively each spot of nail polish will change the path of light restricting the amount of light passing through the centre of the lens.
Alternatively, the old Vaseline filter trick is quite good, just remember to leave a small circle in the middle of the filter (around 1/2 to 1/8 of the diameter, depending on the strength of the effect you want) uncovered or else you’ll just get a messy blur.
So you’ve seen those heart shaped apertures, which produce pretty heart shaped bokeh, it’s sweet but hardly original. The real key is to find out what clever shapes you can cut to best suit your needs.
You’ll need a fastish and/or longish lens, one that can produce relatively narrow depth of field, most people choose a fast 50, and you’ll need some black card or plastic or cover it with electrical tape.
If you notice that all your lenses have the aperture buried somewhere in the middle of the lens, the reason for this is because it’s the optimum position for it, allowing for smaller diameters. However a home made aperture will have to fit somewhere outside of the lens, as a result you’re probably going to be limited to around a couple of stops down from wide open if you don’t want vignetting. Annoyingly apertures are measured in f/number (derived from the lens focal length), but since you will be cutting fancy shapes it’s hard to determine the diameter, so you’ll have to calculate the aperture area. So for example for a 50mm f/1.8 lens, you’ll want to cut an aperture around f/4 or larger, that’s 50mm/4, which is 1.25cm diameter, using πr2(=π(d/2)2, where d is the diameter) you would want an aperture around 1cm2 in area, using the same calculation for a 135mm f2.8 lens you could go for around 4.5cm2 (around 2x2cm).
When you want a nice large light source, out on the street what do you do? The answer is in your bag or pocket. Nowadays with tablets and smartphones containing nice large screens pumping out a loads of light you can download any number of flashlight apps, which you can use as illumination on your subject. The large panel of light acts like a softbox producing even soft light perfect for portraits.
The industry has zero interest in promoting this kind of project, there is no benefit for them to promote people to spend less money. However for the typical photographer, being able to try new techniques without a huge investment is useful. When I started exploring photography I did not want to make huge financial commitments into equipment in subject areas I wasn’t sure I had an interest in, so often finding hacks became a fun challenge, often forcing me to really think about the photography.
Hacks for Portrait and Product Photography
In the first of these posts, I’m going to explore the hacks involved in portraiture and street photography. Sometimes you may find you’re out and about and just need that little extra zing, or perhaps you want to try something before you make a big financial commitment.
Make Your Own Reflector
You will need either:
1. Large silver/steel tea tray
Or:
1. Strong piece of cardboard
2. Tin foil
3. Cellotape/magic tape/some form of transparent adhesive
If you have the tray, you’re in luck, it’s a ready made reflector, just make sure it’s not too highly polished or else you’ll effectively have a mirror, not good for reflecting as it can produce rather hard light. For the tin-foil build, it’s pretty straightforward, cut your cardboard to the desired shape and size, then cut foil to match, and stick it all together.
Soft Focus Filters
You don't need to buy lenses with special soft focus elements, or even a special filter for it, you can literally scavenge the bits you need to achieve the more or less the same effect. In fact there are many approaches to this one, the idea of some kind of spherical aberration to your image using various filter. These filters work by encouraging more off centre light reach the sensor, usually using a gauze or perforated material. Some techniques will be more destructive than others.
First one is very straightforward and eco friendly too. Simply by placing a piece of sheer tights/pantyhose material (important that you use the sheerer, thinner fabrics), choose a black or grey colour if you want neutral colour balance, whilst coloured tights will give you some colour changes, or filtering effects, and thus may be more desirable for black and white work.
The second is to build a multi aperture soft focus filter, using thin cardboard or plastic, a screw in filter and some black electrical tape. Making sure your cardboard/plastic is slightly larger than your filter size cut them into discs the same diameter as your filter. If you’re using black plastic or card then you can go straight to cutting, otherwise first cover the disc with electrical tape then trim to size. Use the following patterns as a guide to cut your filters, the central hole should be between 1/2 and 1/8 of the diameter of the main filter. Feel free to experiment with different patterns. You can then fit these discs to the filter and remove them when you don’t want the soft focus any more.
Below is a template for these filters, you can simply cut them out, and glue them over the card or plastic you're using, and cut to the printed pattern. It's scaled for 77mm filter rings, you are welcome to download and downsize it to fit your lens
This next method is more destructive than previous, take a filter and drip dollops of clear nail polish onto it, effectively each spot of nail polish will change the path of light restricting the amount of light passing through the centre of the lens.
Alternatively, the old Vaseline filter trick is quite good, just remember to leave a small circle in the middle of the filter (around 1/2 to 1/8 of the diameter, depending on the strength of the effect you want) uncovered or else you’ll just get a messy blur.
Cheesy shaped apertures
So you’ve seen those heart shaped apertures, which produce pretty heart shaped bokeh, it’s sweet but hardly original. The real key is to find out what clever shapes you can cut to best suit your needs.
You’ll need a fastish and/or longish lens, one that can produce relatively narrow depth of field, most people choose a fast 50, and you’ll need some black card or plastic or cover it with electrical tape.
If you notice that all your lenses have the aperture buried somewhere in the middle of the lens, the reason for this is because it’s the optimum position for it, allowing for smaller diameters. However a home made aperture will have to fit somewhere outside of the lens, as a result you’re probably going to be limited to around a couple of stops down from wide open if you don’t want vignetting. Annoyingly apertures are measured in f/number (derived from the lens focal length), but since you will be cutting fancy shapes it’s hard to determine the diameter, so you’ll have to calculate the aperture area. So for example for a 50mm f/1.8 lens, you’ll want to cut an aperture around f/4 or larger, that’s 50mm/4, which is 1.25cm diameter, using πr2(=π(d/2)2, where d is the diameter) you would want an aperture around 1cm2 in area, using the same calculation for a 135mm f2.8 lens you could go for around 4.5cm2 (around 2x2cm).
Pocket light panels
When you want a nice large light source, out on the street what do you do? The answer is in your bag or pocket. Nowadays with tablets and smartphones containing nice large screens pumping out a loads of light you can download any number of flashlight apps, which you can use as illumination on your subject. The large panel of light acts like a softbox producing even soft light perfect for portraits.
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