DIYPhotography.net

Finally I got around to making a little change on my GI Radio Slave Transmitter set (those are also known as GI Triggers or Poverty Wizards).

I love the triggers dearly, and while there pop rate is not good enough to play Russian Roulette with, it is good enough for most of my usage.

One thing that has been bothering me for ages is the short rage of those triggers. While they work well indoors, they tend to be a little limiting once stepping outside. I looked around and found some great tuts (including a camo one) about extending the GI range. This post will describe how I did it (kinda quick and dirty).

Click to continue ›

A while back we had a piece about the power of using LEDs in photography. In that article we had a very primitive LED ring light. In this guest post, Tim Brook shares a much better way to create a LED ring light.

Browsing through the dealextreme website, I came across these LED car headlight rings and thought that they’d be ideal for making a Macro Lighting Ring so I placed my order and had a go. Click to continue ›

Multi flash mounts are cool. I have discussed them before when we did a DIY on a dual flash mount. Just a quick recap: Using multiple flashed allows you to either drive more light or to remain on the same light level, while recycling faster. You can read it all here.

Using some objects that my wife will call junk elements smartly scattered around the house, photographer Brent Pennington made a three-way flash mount. Ha! Three is better than two. It will drive a stop and a half more.

As a bonus, Brent's device relives you of the need to use a stud on your swivel. That's a major bonus if you are like me and keep losing them. Kudos.

Of course, you could always sin and get the one made by Lastolite, but then where would all the fun (and your 70 greens) would be?

Read the entire tutorial and deep thoughts on Brent's Blog. Click to continue ›

Brian Carey (site, Flickr) just sent me a very cute mod/hack to create a flash bouncer (much like the omni bounce) only it can be made in 5 seconds and it folds crumbles flat.

It allows your strobe to fire light in all direction much like a bare bulb studio flash. And aside from providing a bare bulb mode on your strobe, it also doubles as a gel holder.

Read Brian's Flash Bouncer/Stopper/Gel holder tutorial after the jump Click to continue ›

Optical Slaves are the simplest (and cheapest for the most part) method for using off camera flashes.

The principle is simple, when the optical slave sees another flash fire, it fires too. Kinda like yawning. Once one of goes, it is catchy.

Of course optical slaves have their limitations, one of which is that they are too dump to understand the difference between a flash and a pre-flash. There are a few more limitations to optical dumb slaves, but this post is about overcoming the pre-flash issue with a cool gizmo called Arduino. Click to continue ›

UPDATE: IanW has a good point in the comments that flashes can go thermal on you. He is right. Pop to hard and too fast and you will overheat. "Fire a flash too frequently with this setup and you will destroy it due
to overheating, unless it's got a thermal cutout (most don't)."

UPDATE 2: if you're gonna do this, make sure you're doing this on a 6V flash, i.e. 4 AA batteries. This will fry your flash if it is a 3V flash (2 AAs)

We write quite a bit about portable strobes. If you've been around for a while you may remember an older version of those strobes. The Sunpak family. While I have not used them myself (too young, sorry), those behemoth shoot at a staggering GN of 48 (meters) and have the look and feel to support it. That makes them ideal for sun swamped on location lighting. The nice thing is that they are old enough to be bought at ridiculously low prices second hand.

The following post about portable power source for small flashes (and Sunpak 611 in particular) is written by John Hagar (blog). Click to continue ›

Photographer Peter Karlsson has it all worked out when it comes to travel light. Peter is a Strobist at heart and as such he is using small flashes quite a bit. The coolness comes in when you see how he places his flashes in space.

Instead of your orthodox light stand solution Peter uses a home brewed light stand made of tent poles. Those are great for travel for several reasons: There are super light-weight, they fold small and they will definitely make your subject go WOW! Luckily for photographers wold wide there are two vids available that shows how those light stands were made. Click to continue ›

Today @AM time I discussed a light tent made from virtually nothing but coroplast and binders. (Not the previous supermarket-box-light-tent took more products to make).

Then I saw a variation on that theme by Nathan Moroney that used nothing but paper binders to create a very similar light same tent.

Now, if you think that coroplast tent was frugal, this one is on the fringe of being made from pure nothing. (Link and musing after the jump).

Click to continue ›

Light tents (also called light boxes) are a great way to shoot a product. They eliminate harsh reflections and create appealing highlights. This specific light tent from Robert Miler has a nice twist since it can fold flat for storage.

It is all Robert from after the jump

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I guess this should go without saying, but I am going to say it anyhow: two flashes are better than one. Now you must be wondering why?

For starters, two flashes will get you a higher score on the GAS scale. (G.A.S. stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome). This alone is a good reason to get two. But there are lighting oriented reasons as well. For some tech talk and a multi flash bracket tutorial, hit the jump. Click to continue ›