I’ve got a number of bags that I like, but I wouldn’t want to chuck a camera in them without some sort of protection. Inside a bag, if not held in place, lens caps can come off and lenses can get scratched, and things get rearranged so that it becomes difficult to find what you’re looking for. And that’s not to mention all the casual bumps that a bag will inevitably get when worn and on the move.

Both Billingham and Domke make stand-alone inserts for their really rather lovely but sadly aspirationally priced bags, for around £30-40. There’s something in me that finds spending that amount on the padding alone a bit too much. Driven by this, and inspired by a number of DIY camera bag blog posts from people who have attempted a similar thing, I took a trip to the rather excellent Cass Art in Islington to see what I could find to help me. I left with a couple of 50cmx50cm neoprene foam sheets (£4 each) and a 2.5m pack of self-adhesive velcro (£7).

Back home, I got a small-ish bag – at least big enough for a digital SLR an a lens, but not much more. A nice sized man bag, effectively. My aim was to create an adaptable design for an insert that would create enough room for my SLR with a standard zoom lens attached, and whatever extra room I could make. After measuring approximate sizes, I made a rough template for an open-ended boxed rectangle, and cut out panels from the neopreme foam. I then attached them to each other with duck tape (I already had this) and used extra to create flaps to which I attached two lengths of velcro (comb-side). Two strips of the fuzzy side of velcro were added to the other panel, so I ended up with something looking a bit like this:

I’ve intentionally not mentioned any measurements here, since it’s very much dependant on the bag, although I found that a depth of around 10cm would be enough for an SLR. Dividers can be made in a similar way. A velcro-flanked square of foam can be strengthed with wire-reinforced cardboard strips. I inserted thickish garden wire into the cardboard’s corrogated ‘pipes’ before attaching the strips to the foam with more duct tape. This provides more vertical strength to the divider to support the weight of an SLR with a lens attached.

The following is the end result, shown from the top:

And from the front…:

I managed an insert and divider from a single sheet of foam, about 60cm of velcro tape, and a bit of duck tape, so total the cost is about £7. I’m now thinking that my Freitag bag will be getting a similar treatment shortly.

I’d been thinking about making a DIY laptop stand for a few weeks, but a glut of reasonably strong cardboard from a recent trip to IKEA spurred me on to make it for real. In addition to cardboard, I also used double-sided tape, and brown packing tape.

It’s a really really simple design. Here’s the template:

I created two of everything here, and stuck them together with double-sided tape, so that each piece was twice-thickness (I guess 5-6mm thick in total). I also re-enforced the cardboard with packing tape – just wrapping it around and trimming it. This gave me two side panels, a front panel and a slightly thicker back panel.

Cuts were made where the dotted lines are shown on the template; about 1.5cm from the front and 2cm from the back on the side panels. (N.B. the ‘front’ is the lowest part on the side panel). All cuts were 2cm deep and wide enough for the thickness of the panels to slot together without a squeeze. On the front panel (the slightly thinner of the two 32cm long pieces, the cuts are made about 1cm from each end, and about 2cm from each end on the back panel. When assembled, this creates a slight tapering towards the back panel, rather than a more flimsy square.

This was designed for a 15″ Macbook Pro with room for an Apple bluetooth keyboard to nuzzle in underneath. I guess it could be prettier, but it does the job and disammembles and reassembles easily for going in and out of storage.