Low Budget Shooting: Do It Yourself Solutions to Professional Photo Gear [Hardcover]

Cyrill Harnischmacher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2007

The serious amateur photographer often faces the problem that even after all the dollars spent on camera, lenses, computer gear, and software, the spending never seems to end. More gear is needed for studio photography, tabletop photography, flash photography, and for accessories here and there. And in many cases, the right accessories are not even available. That is where this book comes in. Low Budget Shooting is the one-stop source where you will find instructions and a shopping list on how to build an array of useful and inexpensive photographic tools.

Filled with full-color images and easy-to-follow text, this book shows how to build essential lighting and studio equipment; how to make the perfect light-table for shooting small objects; and how to build reflectors, soft-boxes, and light-tents that really work. It also tells where to get some of the little helpers that make a photographer's life so much easier. This clever little book is a creative and valuable resource for most any photographer.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Cyrill Harnischmacher is a photographer and designer who lives and works in southern Germany. His first book "lowbudgetshooting" won him the prestigeous Fotobuch-award of the German Booksellers Association in 2005. Cyrill is a studio photographer by profession and a nature and infrared photographer by passion.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 72 pages
• Publisher: Rocky Nook (June 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933952105
• ISBN-13: 978-1933952109
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 8.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #339,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great idea. Spread REALLY thin..., July 31, 2007

By 

GJ "GJ" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Low Budget Shooting: Do It Yourself Solutions to Professional Photo Gear (Hardcover)

This book is a GREAT idea: to show amateur photographers how to build lighting and studio-like equipment using materials and supplies available at the hardware or hobby store (e.g. kite building store for carbon fiber tube connectors).

While I applaud the IDEA, the execution is fairly THIN; after flipping through the book at the bookstore you will quickly realize that it's 90% good looks, and only 10% useful content. Yes, the 10% can easily be described as VERY USEFUL content, but what's in here would easily fit in a 3-page article in Popular Photography or Digital Camera.

Further, it looks to me, like the supplies used in the examples were those available in Europe, so there is no USA-specific advice on where to get that stuff, and no mention of possible brand names that might make online search much easier. In fact, the publisher chose to leave the last SEVERAL pages completely blank! They may have been used more wisely for a list / appendix of US stores or online places that sell some of the stuff shown here, as well as brand names under which some of the materials may be sold in the US. Hopefully, for the next edition, the publisher will take some time + effort to adapt this better to US needs. If would be nice it the book were 50% good looks and 50% substance.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great Ideas... no implementation, December 21, 2007

By 

William Hicks "Book addict" (Flagstaff, arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Low Budget Shooting: Do It Yourself Solutions to Professional Photo Gear (Hardcover)

This booked is jam packed with lots of great ideas for studio gear you can make yourself. Of course it's pretty much just ideas it horribly falls through when it comes to showing you any details on construction. If expanded with more construction details would be one of my favorite books, as it is best comparison I can think of is a cook book that shows you wonderful foods and a list of ingredients and leaves you to figure it out yourself.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Guide to Saving Money, July 2, 2007

By 

Erik Sherman - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Low Budget Shooting: Do It Yourself Solutions to Professional Photo Gear (Hardcover)

When I requested a review copy of Low Budget Shooting: Do It Yourself Solutions to Professional Photo Gear by German photographer and designer Cyrill Harnischmacher, I was hoping to see something useful. I was first taken aback by the thinness of the volume - 72 pages with a hardback cover and paper thickness that only seemed to emphasize the lack of wider content. And yet when I flipped through, I realized that the $19.95 price was something a photographer could recoup multiple times in a single project. Just learning to create a custom soft box out of maybe $10 or $20 worth of material - without needing much in the way of skills or tools - is a money saver. You can learn to pretty easily make reflectors of all sizes, diffusers for a hand-held flash unit, even a table with continuous background for shooting products. There seems to be a bias toward table-top and close-up work, but the techniques he suggests are actually a jumping-off point. For example, you could adapt the soft box construction to a studio flash, or even series of flashes, or create large area reflectors using thin PVC pipes instead of fiberglass tubing. If you have the slightest inclination toward do-it-yourself projects, then this will give you great suggestions for building and improvising a lot of your own equipment without going broke in the process.