DIYPhotography.net

WizWow and Just Fab have done it again. In this nice fun little video Don Giannatti shares three lighting techniques.

In this short video, Don Giannatti really packs in some stuff. The first setup is shows how to do a single strobe glamour portrait.

The second setup is an upgrade to the Three Dollar Beauty Dish by Just Fab (you may remember her from the Ghetto Studio post). Just Fab has gone from one time aluminum pans to more sturdy IKEA pans. Don also uses foam core and window sun shield (My guess is five more dollars to the setup).

The last setup is has another mode from a lightshere, an old reflector and some tissue.

It is mighty kind of Don Giannatti to share his unique lighting in this video. You can see the picture and some more explanations on lighting essentials.

Click to continue ›

I should have seen this one coming. What can you do if you have a ton of SBs and a bit of duct tape? A multi-super-sb-ring-light.

The idea is very simple - take 6 super-duper Nikon SBs and mount them on a cut coffee can. You can use duct tape to hold them on.

Connect 3 pocket wizards with splitters to the flashes and fire away.

No doubt that Joshua Targownik (check out his cool site) has a great idea, here are some of my thoughts on this great ring flash.

Click to continue ›

Yet another small internal flash bouncer. I really like this one since it is the fastest one to make yet. I'll estimate about 15 seconds.

If you are a big executive and have your own business card, you can cut the time it takes you to get a business card and you are at 5 seconds. The results are not professional and there is some light lost, but when all else fails, it is a neat trick to have up your sleeve. It will defiantly work for Canon internal flashes. Other brands - you might need to adjust a bit.

I got this trick in the mail from Marko Helenius. He holds a nice gallery at markohelenius.fi. Pleae go over there and have a looksy. Judging by the (small number of) studio shots, this guy knows what he is doing. Now I give the floor to Marko.

Click to continue ›

This guest post by Rick S. (aka therickman), Pittsburgh, PA. features a stofen like device for no money at all. (OK, 2 cents, if you get really pecky). It's foldable and it's cheap and it'll give you a bare bulb type of lighting. To learn more about bare-bulb lighting visit the strobist.

Here is a quick and easy way to make a "professional" flash diffuser without shelling out twenty or so dollars at your local camera shop. In fact, the cost of this homemade pearl is... well, nothing! Just your time making it, which should take less than ten minutes. Ready to start taking better images with softer lighting? Let's go! Click to continue ›

Beauty Dish for the Mechanically challenged a guest post by Just Fab

I had the honor of being photographed by one of my mentors, Don Giannatti (Wizwow on flickr) the other day after attending one of his fantastic lighting seminars. He chose to use a beauty dish on me. I love the way beauty dishes look, especially the way it sculpts the edges of my roundish face. Soft concentrated light which falls off quickly. You can learn more about the merits of the beauty dish on Don’s site.

Most of my inspiration for lighting setups come from that site and DVD. Anyway, I was so excited when I saw the images I knew I had to come up with something that could recreate the look that was portable and wouldn’t break the bank. Although I am handy with PVC pipes, my ability to use power tools are in question. I was thinking of cutting out a hole in a wok or mixing bowl, but I still couldn’t figure out how to rig it to reflect the concentrated beam back into the dish, plus my lighting stand would probably never stay upright with that kind of weight.

Click to continue ›

Photographer Nathan Moody Has posted a nice threatening portrait done with the strip light setup shown here.

After enjoying this great portrait and lighting,

I can see some more added value to this picture and discussion on the "picture flick thread" (click image to go there.

The first cookie is the method used to remove the light fall off - a bounce card under the camera.

A second cookie is fluorescent flicker discussion on the photo page. O'bran was concerned with flickering of the light caused by the way fluorescent works - they flickr many times a second depending on the current fluctuation in your electricity socket. Click to continue ›

Photographer David Greene was kind enough to share a cool lighting technique he uses for fashion photography. Using your everyday florescence fixtures and bulbs David creates two strip lights. Watch the flick.

There strip lights are good enough to go with f/3.5 on100 ISO which is nice, and you don't need to use florescence filters, cuz the bulbs (can you call florescence bulbs?) are daylight balanced. Click to continue ›

Not so long ago, I got a mail from a reader and fellow DIYer Joris van den Heuvel. Joris referred me to his site where to my astonishment I found a ringlight heaven.

Now, I know that the photography web has been sizzling with ringlights ever since David Hobby posted his challenge for a DIY ringflash, but this guy is something else. Got some cool stuff I haven't seen anywhere else.

Starting out with a "regular" one liner LED ring light (AKA Ring Light 1.0), Joris evolved to a two liner LED array and even a three liner. BUT WAIT!!! It gets better. CFFL tubes are yet another version of a ring flash, and.....

Joris's latest work in progress is a fiber optics based ring light (just saying fiber optics flash makes me feel sophisticated and cool). I say - stay tuned for this one - as my friends' say this is something completely different. You know what; check em all out here.

If you have a Technorati account and a spear minute, I'd love it if you add DIYP as a fav. You can use this link.

Related Links:
- Joris van den Heuvel Ring Light Portal - Get your good stuff here
- Strobist Flash Ring Challenge
- DIYP Flash Ring 1
- DIYP Flash Ring 2 Click to continue ›

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. Click to continue ›

I got lots of comments and question asking how to print the flash mounted homemade diy softbox. Some readers have had trouble printing the diagram on multiple pages.

One of DIYPhotography.net readers was kind enough to help me figure out why it was not printing on some computers. Are you having the same troubles? Do not despair.

It appears that the driver for the mdi format I was using to span the print over several pages is not installed by default when you install office. Look at this Microsoft article to learn how to install the driver for this file. Click to continue ›