A beauty dish provides a light pattern that is kinda between what you get from a bare flash and a softbox. Beauty dishes are an awesome modifier tool, but they have one caveat - price. While branded beauty dishes are kinda on the higher range of modifiers when it comes to costs, they are pretty easy to build for a few dollars if you have a pair of good hands and the time to drive to a close by home depot.
OK, this is becoming a bit of a personal obsession so if you are fed up with lo-fi projectors, just move along nothing to see.
They say that there is nothing you can't build with Lego. This is absolutely true. Even life sizes houses.
Photographer Jacek Poplawski cobbled up a projector from a few Lego bricks and some spare lenses he took off from a "real" slide projector. Those can be found on eBay for as little as $15. Click to continue ›
Usually you use a seamless white when you want to take pictures on a white nutral background.
There are several variations on that, if the subject is small, you can use a piece of paper, and it you want something a bit more permanent you can build a cyclorama wall, but what about photographing a fire truck with that white background?
You would need a huge seamless. Or... a huge egg shaped studio. Click to continue ›
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that we are a big fans of reflectors. I would say that the 5-in-1 reflector is probably one of the most useful items a photographer can have in their bag. It is cheap and can serve for shade, a backdrop in a pinch and, of course, reflecting light.
The only caveat with the 5-in-1 is that it is usually a rather smallish item. Maybe 43" in diameter.
Flash diffusers have always been one of the more effective projects on the blog. If you are a run and gun photographer doing events or coverage, you don't always have time to set up an off camera flash on location, and having a diffuser is the next best thing. (though you can still hold the strobe by hand/boom, foam it or mount it on a bag).
The problem with most of the DIY diffusers we features along the years is that they are either not very slick looking or that they provide only a small surface to bounce off.
A simple flash bouncer is the next best thing to shooting off camera flash. It either makes the flash bigger by diffusing some of its light, or have it bounce to the wall / ceiling creating a big spot of light that bounces back to the subject.
I guess this is why there are so many products that provide this function, along with a ton of DIY solutions to the same problem.
This is why it is refreshing to see a new take on that problem. Designer Benny Johansson (who made the genius cap holder and was finalist on our sofbox contest) came up with a slightly different flash bouncer thingy built from two pieces of recycled plastic - the PilleVippo. The amazing thing about the PilleVippo is that it is super versatile and 100% DIY. It fits both point and shots and DSLRs. All you need is an old plastic container and a template you can get on Ben's site. Click to continue ›
I know the title says something about lighting modifiers, but after seeing the last installment of the slanted lens I figured I'd mess around with their timing and start the show where they make camera cookies. (did someone say mother's day?)
Of course, they also pixel peep the heck out of photoflex Octadomes, and showing how to build several simple lighting setups using them. I guess you are here for the lighting, right? so go the beginning of the vid for the octa lessons.
If you're tired from your "regular" snoot that does the job of aiming flagging light pretty well, but not really much more, photographer Peter Miesch has an interesting take on a non regular snoot.
the Film Noir snoot is a telescopic snoot that has a built-in slot for GOBOs which create film noir effects. I suspect that its prime material is cereal box cardboard fitted with black straws for slides and stoppers. Click to continue ›
One of my favorite ways to shoot is with accented rim lights. And while I love the look this kind of light produces there is a bit of a trickery to setting those lights up.
The reason is that back lights create flare.
David Hobby came up with a pretty clever way to block flare generating lights using a frame made from coroplast (the same material used for DIY flags, and grids). Click to continue ›
Polarizer filters can be used to enhance contrast and saturation in landscape photography and reduce reflections or glare on shiny surfaces such as water. The effect is maximized by aligning the polarizer on the camera so that the polarizing direction is perpendicular to that of the light you want to block.
On a bright day it works best if you are in a 90 degrees angle to the sun, but there will always be some light reflected by the surrounding or diffused by clouds which still reduce the effect. (See the differnce between the right and left sides of the image below)
This article shows how a polarizing filter for a flash allows to make use of the effect with artificial light. Some subjects will look gorgeous while others may be rendered in an odd way but it's certainly fun playing with the effect and you can still vary the level by turning your filter on the lens. In a nutshell, we are going to polerize the light coming from the strobe to better control its specular higlights.
Every lightsource could be modified to emmit polarized light. But some devices (such as displays and some lasers) already emmit polarized light. See the images below for examle images illuminated with an iPad.
