DIY ND FADERS / Vari ND

Filming with DSLR's made it possible to get smooth and pretty Bokeh and DOF however the bad with wide open lenses like F1.2 or f1.4 is that during a sunny day its too bright and you need to set the shutter speed close to 1/4000 however which makes the movements in the shots look choppy. However you can buy ND filters however its annoying to have several different ND filters and needs to stack them get proper lighting to lower the shutter speed to around 1/60. However stacking several ND will lessen the quality of the shot and bad ND filters can cause Redness cause they don't filter the red colours or Infra-red colours enough.

However there is a solution using Vari ND which you dont need to carry tons of different ND filters and can place just one Vari ND filter on your lens and turn the ND filter to adjust the ND stops to change the brightness. However the filters aren't that cheap they cost around 50 to several hundreds of dollars.

The ones from 50 dollars are not that expensive and can be found on Ebay and are shipped from China. However to be really even cheaper than 50 Dollars, you can actually buy two cheap polarisers and stack then on top of each other. It can be two Linear polarisers, a linear in front of the CPL polariser or two CPL polarisers. However if you got two CPL polarisers you need to follow the video below.

DIY Variable ND filter from DvRebellion.com on Vimeo.

However the only bad with DIY Faders are that they are not really build to be perfect ND Faders or Vari ND and in the Higher / Darker ND regions there might be a certain colour change. However it is mostly when the at the Darkest end which not always be used that much.

Also a tip is not to buy CPL for all your lenses cause that would be way to expensive. The best is to buy it for the largest lens mostly that would be a filter of 77mm and then buy stepper or stepdown rings so you can fit the filer on lenses with smaller filter threads.

DIY SLIDERS on a budget!

Here are few DIY Sliders for low on budget film makers. Cause even the cheapest one you could buy you still need to pay around 300 bucks and also there is a IGUS slider with I find not really DIY cause plainly its just drilling one hole and you basically have the same as the expensive ones, but also you have to pay around 150 bucks for that which aint cheap. Also Youtube is filling up with tons of just test vids and not really showing how to make it, I will just help you see through the grass and just show the best real DIY vids out there. So here below is the first slider which is just build using 5 bucks.

This is a fairly cheap Camera Slider made from 2x broomsticks and several PVC pieces and some nuts and bolts. Build for just 5 bucks which is probably the cheapest build I have seen but the vid shows it would like a charm. Credit to Defnyung for this vid, and visit his Youtube page here

Here is another one by INDYMOGUL for just 20 Dollars.

However this one basically is about the same as Defnyung by using PVC pieces but this one slides over other PVC tubs and is built to be tripod mounted. However you might want to use broomsticks instead of the pvc tube as in the vid you can see it being all deformed.

Here is one by bobshwingle1 which is basically the same as INDYMOGUL but cleaner build and not screwing the PVC tube directly to the wood but using clamps to hold it to the wood and saving few bucks on the screws.

This slider is about 45 Dollars but looks more pro and not give away to much of a DIY look.

However you do need to work with steel which isnt that easy and also need to know how to drill through steel. However its also build with the method with PVC pieces to slide but this time is sliding over metal rods. However the finish build does look professional and does not give away that its a DIY build.

Here is another DIY however not really Showing how it is made but from the looks of it not bad and uses a very different way of sliding.

I probably want to make something that is relative the same as this however I dont think you actually need to have 4 wheels and just 3 would be enough. However the problem always with DIY is if you can find the proper materials. Especially the wheels with the bearings in it is quite a

However here is a kinda slider but actually more a small dolly cause it is not sliding on a track but surely small and easy to carry around and can do slider kinds of shots if the surface is good enough plus its very easy to make.

Total Cost was around 6 bucks and not much you have to do and its a very lazy build, however I will try and make a real slider soon though.