DIY Equipment

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What's the purpose of a Matte Box? The big flags help shade the lens from flares or any little bit of light adding better color and contrast, and also allows placement of certain filters such as ND, Gradients, and Polarizers. With filters you would be able to control shutter drag, aperture, color, and other details. Nothing beats the real thing, but if you can't afford it, there's some clever DIY tutorials out there. YouTube member EquippedforMedia puts together a DIY Matte Box starting with a tray for a weighing scale. Filter holder is the popular Cokin P series, which i've used myself in Hawaii.

The Cokin Filter system is a light weight cheap filter kit (mostly plastic), but great for traveling and keeping things light. With a good Gradient ND Filter you can bring down the bright sky while still maintaining proper exposure on the landscape. Keep in mind these filters are not just for video, but enhance your Photography too. One thing to keep in mind that as you stack filters in front of the lens, it's harder to manage with Wide Angle Lenses.

So instead of going the DIY route to control Lens flare, Cokin already has a square hood with filter holder to get you started with a Matte Box type look, and filter holder functionality. They are also stackable so that you can make the hood longer or shorter. What you'll need to make this happen is the Filter Ring (choose correct size), Filter Holder, Square Hood (or several), and P Series Filters. You could probably score all of this for under $30 bucks.

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find-price-button Cokin P Series Filters, Filter Holders, Square Lens Hoods

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YouTube member MrHotRod460 assembles a DIY DSL Shoulder rig. Things seem to be in all the right places to stay in control of all the accessories, keep it well balanced, and ergonomic. Not shown was probably the LCD monitor that goes towards the left hand. If you're not into LCD View finders, placing a lightweight LCD in front instead of the entire camera keeps most of the weight closer to the shoulder support. More comfortable for some people, but obviously more things to carry and manage. Great stuff though.

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Varavon's new Armor adds a few extra handles as well as accessory mounting points. It's a cross between a cage and a hand held stabilizer. I think it looks pretty cool, but i'm not sure how you actually set the thing down. Either way, it keeps the camera looking fairly low profile while still adding functionality to shooting hand held, I think it's pretty cool.

Thinking about what I have laying around to simulate a DIY, it reminds me of a Photographer's Rotating Flash Bracket. Maybe throw a handle here and there, drill a few holes... Check this one out by Custom Brackets.
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find-price-button CB Junior Rotating Flash Bracket Kit

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find-price-button Variety of Rotating Flash Brackets via eBay

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Vimeo member ek2008 really took his time making this DIY video camera stabilizer. Not only looks good, but works great as seen in the video above. Look through some of the older videos and you'll see it's been a work in progress for several months.

Vimeo member Tim Nitsch uses a simple servo, spool, and a bit of string to motorize an IGUS slider. More information on how it's all put together at the video link.

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The 352 LED Ring light has a certain effect on how it throws light around a subject, so my buddy Dave decided to test it with a Photo Shoot. I removed the ugly bracket and just used a Friction Power Arm. With the Power arm, it can be mounted onto a light stand or to a camera hot shoe and also allows it to be positioned in many ways.

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find-price-button Adjustable Accessory Power Friction Arm

The Ring light really needed to be dimmed, it's just too bright at full power, so there's still plenty of power not shown in the video. The 14.4V DIY battery pack I made lasted for hours, and I could have used the Ryobi batteries too. The rim light to separate the subject was the cheap 500 LED (dimmable knob type) Light panel hung from a beam. To add the halo, there's a Nikon speedlite snooted off to the side. To do this, you can also use these HoneyComb Grids.
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find-price-button Harbor Honeycomb Spot Grid with Colored Gels

All images of the model were shot with Continuous light, even the Canon 7D video used only the light from the 352 Ring light (and 500 LED from the back). The 352 LED Ring light is definitely a great tool and with the battery pack makes it much more usable, pretty cool stuff.


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find-price-button 500 LED Video Light Panel Dimmable

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find-price-button 352 12V Capable Dimmable LED Ring Light

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Because the 900 LED panels can be battery powered, it's fairly easy to use this as a portable On-Camera video light. Here it's shown mounted on the Letus DSLR Cage with Canon T3i + 18-55mm IS II lens. I'm just kidding..it's a joke people. Don't get too serious about this post. You all know I would never be seriously caught going out with this type of setup. I mean, who can take the 18-55mm stock lens seriously? LOL. Now to mount this to a shoulder rig...yeah..now we're talking.. (kidding guys..kidding)

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A common question right now is, why the 900's? Well the 900's is a happy medium sitting right in between the 600 & 1200 LED lights. I can't complain since the 900's already push out twice the light as the older 500 LED panels. An upgrade is an upgrade. Also as seen in the images (above) I can fit (2) 900 LED light panels into standard sized Carry On luggage and room to spare for my power cords. The 500 LED panels were a bit beefier and would be impossible to fit two. You can check out more images and specs about these new LED light panels over at Amazon available for Prime - Click Here.

600 LED 900 1200 Video Light Panel
find-price-button Dimmable LED Video Light Panels

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900-LED-Video-Light

I setup (3) of my new 900 LED Video light panels against the 500 LED panels. These things really put out some power. Obviously there's more light output than the older 500 LED panel, but the color and throw is a world of difference. The 900 LED panel has an AC power cord that outputs 15V, and terminates to an 'N' size (Radio Shack) pin. This is the same size pin the Z96 and 352 LED Ring light uses. So I quickly threw on a variety of my DIY batteries to test total light output.

With the 900 LED panel powered from a 12V battery, the light turned on but was pretty dim. Using my (2) RC batteries joined together to 14.4V, the light was at full power. The third light I connected to AC power (15V) and was exactly at the same output as the one running on RC batteries 14.4V. I left the LED on full power using the RC batteries (fully charged) and after about an hour the light began to dim.

So it's possible to power these LED lights from a portable battery pack, but you'd need something that was at least 14V and fairly large to get some decent run time out of them. Even though they come with the V-Lock Battery mount, that might not be enough time to be worth the high cost of those batteries. Time to find a solution...

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find-price-button 900 LED Dimmable Photography Video Camera DSLR 5400K/3200K Lighting Light Panel Sony V Mount battery Adapter INCLUDED 14V OUTPUT 110V-230V

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Dave writes in and shares his DIY ring light mount for a GoPro HD Camera. Using the inexpensive UFO Camping light and an added handle it looks like it could be pretty effective. Pretty slick Dave, pretty slick. Gives me some ideas on taking something like this into the Las Vegas night clubs..LOL. [Thanks Dave]

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find-price-button 48 LED UFO Camping Lights

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YouTube member John Waskey writes in and shares his secret to a budget Motion controlled Timelapse slider. As an Astronomy fan, he uses a Telescope Motor mounted to a Kessler Dolly. Probably one of the best variable speed motors i've seen that can run you just under $40 bucks, specs on it state it can last up to 40 hours on a single 9 volt battery. What's the top speed? I'm not sure, but it can move slow enough to produce great time lapse footage, and it's already boxed up ready to mount. You can find these motors available below. [Thanks John]

via Amazon:
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find-price-button Telescope Motor Drive

via eBay:
Telescop Motor Time Lapse
find-price-button Variable Speed Telescope Motor for DIY Motion Time Lapse Slider