Photography & Video

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for creating and editing digital photos and videos, as well as how to make your own still and video cameras.

DIY Smartphone LED Ring Light

DIY Smartphone LED Ring Light

A ring flash will get you a shot with uniform lighting without harsh shadows. Lighting blogger Simon Ellingworth whipped up this LED variant for smartphones using a UFO-style camping light, a cheap smartphone case, and some velcro. You’ll obviously have to tweak your settings to achieve the effect you want, but anything has to be […]

Best of 2012: The MAKE Flickr Pool

Best of 2012: The MAKE Flickr Pool

Today’s post marks the 170th MAKE Flickr pool weekly roundup. They’ve been running each weekend under that title, with very few interruptions, since February 2008, and have settled into a more-or-less regular format. Each Sunday we present seven pictures, in reverse-Letterman order, starting with the image that, for whatever reasons, is our favorite of those submitted during the preceding week. Generally, for the roundup, we choose pictures based on their aesthetics. And we’ve seen some stunners this year. Settling on only seven proved to be impossible, for me, so I’ve doubled the weekly count, for this annual best-of, to fourteen.

Best of 2012: Google+ Hangouts on Air

Best of 2012: Google+ Hangouts on Air

We dived into the world of Google+ hang outs on air this part summer with Maker Camp, six weeks of daily hangouts, live and online. If the web democraticized publishing, G+ hangouts have democratized the video broadcast. They can be as low or high production as you like. All that’s required is a good ethernet connect and interesting conversation and guests and you’re good to go. Since then, MAKE has explore use of the technology. What we do with hangout will continue to evolve. For now, here is our highlight reel from the year that was.