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DIY homemade GaryFong Like Light Sphere
Gary Fong has become a de-facto standard for speed light diffusion. The accessories made by Gary include the famous Lightsphere and lots of other small flash improvements.
I have tried to make some flash modifiers in the past, like a flash mounted softbox or an improvised beauty dish. Zond is following this approach with a Lightsphere solution.
Zond2 came up with a small and cheap flash application that mimics the lightsphere effect. The materials: A soda bottle, some foam cardboard and a starbucks latte cap.
I did not test this at home, but the concept looks really nice.
Zond was kind enough to share the process:
Start off with a cylinder cut from a 2 liter soda bottle
Place some foam paper on the back of the bottle and use a lid of a Dairy Queen MooLatte (O.K. Any other fine creamed beverage will do). Then use a foam board to create the bottom of the sphere. Cut it out a bit tighter then the shape of your flash.
This is how the interior looks like
And this is how it looks like assembled
And on flash.
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Related links:
- Zond2
- Gary Fong
- Homemade softbox
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Comments
Colors
I wonder how this would work with colored bottles as the basis? Green is the most common color, but you can find red and blue. Given the simplicity, it may be worth it to try those for effect.
Examples
Great Idea and great directions! Thank You!
Can you please post some before and after pictures so that we may see how well your DIY version works.
not worth the time
I found this to be a waste of time. It didnt really help at all. Lighting was almost the same as just bouncing off the ceiling. It was such a small difference, I couldn't tell which was of my pictures were taken with the bottle on and those without. And finding the lid for on top of the bottle was hard. The Dairy Queens around here only have clear lids, and they are far to small to work in the bottle. I had to drive around to places, asking to borrow a lid to check the size. I finally found a white one that almost fit at a local ice cream shop here in Duluth. They use it to cover a bowl of ice cream, so Im am not sure where else to find these.
Anyway, bottom line is Gary Fong's set up is only 40 bucks, and you can find the same thing on ebay made in hong kong for only around 8, 20 with shipping. I would recommend spending the 20.
you can go to a dollar store
you can go to a dollar store and get a smalll pack of rubbermaid containers paint the bowl white and use the lid for the bottom. It may not be a lot different that n=bouncing it off of the ceiling, so long as you have a ceiling to bounce it off of, and this willalways be the same where every ceiling is a little different.
Obviously this modifier is
Obviously this modifier is made for situation where you don't have a low ceiling for bounce. So of course if you have a low enough ceiling this thing wouldn't be of much use.
Photos!
Yeah it would be nice to see some shots made with this one!
Yap, so will I
If you've made this - post a picture to the flickr group.
- thanks, Udi.
I love this thing! I have
I love this thing! I have made two of them. The first one I made with the two liter bottle, but the second one I used a large cdr or dvdr package, the ones blank cds come in. The plastic is thicker and it holds it's form better especially when using a hot glue gun that warped the thin plastic on the first one I made.
I made mine a bit different, and here's the results
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marciocavalcanti/2264947195/
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