DIY lighting modifiers for speedlights.. What have you made and how well did it work?

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as per title really, DIY lighting modifiers for speedlights.. What have you made and how well did it work?

Am considering making some simple lighting modifiers and am wondering what else people have made.

Thanks,
Sam
 
Why bother, everything is available for pennies nowadays, from snoots to diffusers, without having to look like a tit, walking around with half a plastic milk bottle shoved atop of a £300 flashgun.....
 
I've used a pringles can as a snoot a few times. Works pretty well.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
Why bother, everything is available for pennies nowadays, from snoots to diffusers, without having to look like a tit, walking around with half a plastic milk bottle shoved atop of a £300 flashgun.....
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Have you seen how much Honl stuff goes for?? :eek:

I'd much rather fold a bit of card to make my own snoots and grids for pennies than spend £100 on them, who gives a monkeys what it looks like so long as the results are good?

I've just made a grid with an inner from a Mini Jumbo toilet roll inner (the sort you get at work loos, not home) which is the perfect size to fit a 430EX2. I used 1/4 black plastic fuel pipe cut into short lengths and glued them into place, covered the whole lot in black tape. Works a treat and cost me nothing as I had all the bits. It looks ok, alright its not the professional solution but so what?

I also made my own tri flash bracket from some ally I had laying around. Temporarily I'm using 1/4 set screws to mount the flashes (a bit fiddly but it works) until I get hold of some cheap coldshoes.

I also made my own mounts to fit a speedlite to a S fit softbox. I had a few goes at this, the first and second prototypes were naf looking, fiddly but worked. Third prototype great. Again it doesn't look fantastic but its secure and was cheap to make (free)
 
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Flash In The Pan said:
Why, can't you cobble one of those together too out of your Blue Peter box? :lol:
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Well actually....

Erm no, my soldering sucks. I did think about cobbling some sort of LED or halogen continuous light together but in the end...icbb. It wasn't worth it, too many issues involved.

I think its well worth making your own brackets/modifiers etc if you have the materials to hand and the ability but some things aren't worth it.
 
I did make a half decent 8 x 4' diffuser panel using £5 worth of plastic tubing from B&Q and a £4 white shower curtain (its exactly the same kind of material as the real thing).

Currently working on a bigger version with ally instead of plastic (at this size the plastic would flex too much)

Very useful for creating nice diffused ambient light or shade for when its too bright out.
 
This is for my own learning purpose when messing around with flashes at home shooting friends (working my way through the strobist blog), so modifiers that I can DIY and hack about if I am not happy with them suit me... Got lots of card, tape etc and some serious blue peters skills.

Why buy a snoot when one can be made so simply (thin black card and a rubber band)?

Sam
 
I've made a strip light out of a pringle tube, works well for taking photos of small things.
 
Snoot....

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Macro diffuser....

20110720_184601_1267_LR.jpg
 
Flash In The Pan said:
Why bother, everything is available for pennies nowadays, from snoots to diffusers, without having to look like a tit, walking around with half a plastic milk bottle shoved atop of a £300 flashgun.....
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Is the correct answer. But this DIY stuff can be quite fun :D

Upsidedown plastic milk bottles work really well. Cut the bottom (top) off, and make a hinged lid with gaffa tape, to create a Fong. Line the back with kitchen foil to stop waste light spilling out behind - better than a Fong ;)

Line the top with foil too, to increase efficiency outside. Make another top, without the foil, and fix with a detachable velcro hinge. You've then got quite a versatile, and very effective bounce-fill system diffuser. Much better than a Fong :thumbs:

Make lots and sell for $100, like the Fong. Do the same with a bigger bottle. Paint it orange, add bullcrap marketing and charge $200, buy a mansion and retire. Like Gary Fong.
 
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tdodd said:
Snoot....

20110720_184437_1265_LR.jpg



Macro diffuser....

20110720_184601_1267_LR.jpg
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Ok I'm all for saving a few pennies here and there but I got one of the snoot kits of FITP and it worked a treat.

You've clearly spend a fair few grand on that set up 1D, 70-200 2.8L, 580EXII and then a Pringle tube :S just seems a bit stupid for the sake of a tenna.
 
kiteninja said:
Ok I'm all for saving a few pennies here and there but I got one of the snoot kits of FITP and it worked a treat.

You've clearly spend a fair few grand on that set up 1D, 70-200 2.8L, 580EXII and then a Pringle tube :S just seems a bit stupid for the sake of a tenna.
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I think you've missed the point of DIY ;)

Which one is the snoot anyway? :thinking:
 
HoppyUK said:
I think you've missed the point of DIY ;)
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I think he's missed the ironic intent. :nuts:

More seriously, I have never used either of these setups. In fact I only tried fitting the Pringles can to my flash a couple of days ago and it's a perfect fit without the need for any velcro, tape or other modifications. As for the macro diffuser idea, that only occurred to me after I took the first photo as a spur of the moment thing. Is it daft? Probably. Could it be useful at a stretch, or at least to spark a better idea for something similar? Possibly.

Would I mind paying a tenner for a "proper" snoot kit? Not in the least, but this thread is about DIY modifiers, not off the shelf solutions.

More importantly, does it work? I put it to the test a few moments ago and I think the answer is an unreserved "Yes.". What's more, you get a free snack meal thrown in. :)

24mm lens on a 1D3 with flash head zoomed to 105mm and no snoot....

20110721_094217_7247_LR.jpg


Pringles snoot added....

20110721_094234_7248_LR.jpg



Get some black drinking straws and bind them together to make an insert for the snoot to add a grid and further reduce the light spread. I can't try it as I don't have any such straws, but it's a well known solution.
 
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Thing is, its not really about saving money (well, not always)

There is a certain satisfaction in cobbling something together for free or not very much that does the same job just as well as something that costs £££'s.

I made a ring flash adaptor for my 580EX2 - yeah I could buy one of the orbis/rayflash jobbies but this one cost me nothing, occupied me for a couple of hours and I like the results:

5352262549_60ee2e6c88_z.jpg


Whereas it isn't as efficient as the real thing and doesn't quite work, it still makes nice light, now I've experimented for free I can buy a proper one knowing I like the look and it'll get used.
 
Ste Manns said:
Whereas it isn't as efficient as the real thing and doesn't quite work, it still makes nice light, now I've experimented for free I can buy a proper one knowing I like the look and it'll get used.
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This ^^^

It's a great way to test out ideas - if they work then over time you can aquire what you need to last you. Pringle tubes take minutes to set up and cost next to nothing to test out some ideas. In addition, If you know how to make stuff like that work it might get you out of a problem or help create something new and different when there's nothing available. You might not want to take a full modifier kit on holiday for example but you could probably get hold of some carboard, a pringles tube and some tape if the need arose.

Can we get back OT though and see more idea of what has worked etc. I'm off for a tattie based snack...
 
This shot was done with two snoots, one was a pringle tube the other was just a sheet of card folded with white (couldn't find any black ones) straws glued in the end to create a tighter circle of light:

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This was back when I didn't really know much about flash so I was pretty chuffed with the result at the time :) If I was doing it again I'd be lighting her face more evenly and losing the odd nose shadow :D
 
I love DIY gear. I keep tons of fab foam in my bag for snoots and flags. I've got a load of bit of card for snoots too along with lots of homemade grids.

My homemade ringflash hasn't seen the light of day with a client though. Too embarrassed!
 
I tweaked my Pringles macro light a little to be more suited to the task, shortening the tube to suit the length of my macro lens, creating a bit more downlight towards the subject andd slightly increasing the surface area of the apparent light source.....

20110721_125308_1269_LR.jpg


Sample shot with the above....

20110721_125448_9501_LR.jpg


Room for improvement, do doubt, but I think a useful step forwards from a bare Speedlite on top of the hotshoe.
 
By coincidence I knocked up a flash snoot a couple of weeks ago. Looks like this:
Snoot_1_szd.jpg

Snoot_2_szd.jpg


I made it because I: a) am a cheapskate; b) wanted it to be exactly right for my macro rig; and c) love making stuff.

I made a paper template round my SB-900 then took it apart (template, not SB-900 ;-) ) and cut the same out of HIPS sheet. Heat-bent the thing into shape shown, added silver foil inside on the 45 degree slope, then fitted a lenticular plastic sheet diffuser for best combination of brightness and spread. Works a treat, especially with a reflector underneath subject to give a bit of backlight too.

Use it for daylight macro to give good depth of field while still freezing any motion and so liberate from tripod.

And best of all, made from things I had lying around so spent precisely nothing to make it.
 
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Here's a DIY diffuser made from a shower curtain and using the white bathroom door as a reflector to provide fill. In this example I actually have 2 X 150W tungsten work lamps as the light source, but no reason why it couldn't be Speedlites instead.

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Here is the result. Execution of the original capture was poor so I've had to tweak this a bit, but compared to a bare flashgun I think it's not bad. This was my first ever attempt at "lighting" a portrait and posing a model. Back then I knew nothing of hair lights, rim lights etc. and there were some space constraints that limited my options. Excuses I know, but the shower curtain is achieving the intended purpose at least.

20090831_203958_9425_LR.jpg
 
Brilliant, those are exactly the sort of things I am talking about... Cheap/free ways of trying ideas out before investing money that could be better spent elsewhere...

I already have a large piece of black and a large piece of white muslin, and suitable clips for attaching them to curtain poles and a few other toys but the above have given me a couple of ideas to try.

Any more for any more?

Thanks,
Sam
 
Love Mark's macro thing :thumbs: I've been looking at those LED lights that Tescos etc are selling for a few quid - a round one about 2in across and a bigger oblong one, about 2in x 8in from memory - a couple of those and a wire coathanger?

And Tim's shower curtain - despite his excuses, the light is wonderful. Great capture :) Never done portraits in the bathroom before...

TBH, perhaps the best DIY flash jobbie is a humble bounce card off the ceiling. Two lights in one - soft bounce plus fill-in balanced with the size of the card.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
The ones I have were a tenner a set (2 grids, snoot, bounce card/flag)
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Which one, and are they any good?

edit: got a couple of snoots and grids made form black straws (eBay for a pound or so) and Lasagne boxes.
 
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Homemade modifiers. I've ma lots over the last couple of years, from simple shoots to different ideas.

I made a stoplight from a cardboard tube from carpet. It was lined with sticky foil tape and was about 6 foot long. A flashgun in each end held in with a a car sponge, so the whole lot was made for about £1 and leftovers.
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The result was
138490599.jpg
 
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