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Remember the story about that king from ancient Greek called Midas? Midas was a greedy, greedy king that loved gold more then life itself.

In fact Midas loved gold so much that he prayed the gods to grant him a golden touch. His wish was granted, and now, everything the king touched turned into gold. 

This was quite a party trick with the wooden cup, table cloth and the chicken and apples. Wait a minute, chicken and apples? Yes. Midas could not eat. With his fear of starving to death he prayed the gods again to take his gift away. His new wish was granted. Moral at the and of the post.

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Here is another great one from Martin Kimeldorf, converting a LumiQuest popup diffuser into a softbox thingy. This will work great to add some direct flash fill in. Now, I am not saying that you should run and buy one of those just to mod it, you can start with silk and some black Bristol and get the same place.

I liked the LumiQuest Diffuser for Pop Up flashes except that the diffuser panel hung rather limply on my camera and thus produced an unreliable surface shape. Also, I wondered about the light escaping the sides. Then I thought, I could add sides and create a miniature soft box, especially if the inside had a silvered lining. Click to continue ›

OK, we have done bouncers and diffusers before. We had a nice paper/foamy version of the LumiQuest and a nice paper version of the Stofen. So what's the big deal about this one? 

Firstly, it comes to you from  Martin Kimeldorf, the guy who converted his lightstand to backdrop mount.

Secondly it is the HUGEST bouncer I've ever seen. Excluding the ceiling bounce, of course.

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Welcome to this multi-part series of articles on Exploring Small Strobes by Yanik Chauvin from Yanik’s Photo School.

In part 1 on Exploring Small strobes, I looked at why using flash guns instead of the built-in flash and studio strobes. In part 2, I went through the importance of using your speedlight off camera. In part 3, I covered how to trigger your small strobes off camera. Today, we’ll look at accessories made especially for speedlights. Click to continue ›

In this article Mohamed Talal  shows us how to make a simple diffuser for a DSLR pop up flash.

There are three things that separate this diffuser from other diffusers we have featured before. The first is the total cost - this one really costs nothing.  The second one is the size of the diffusion panel. By using this method you get a nicely sized diffusion panel. Lastly, a quick mod will turn this diffuser to a ring flash.

It is called the Headphones diffuser, but don't feel obliged to use headphones casing, you can use GI-Joe's casings, Transformers casings, or just a nice pieces of transparent material.

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I just love gridspots. The amount of light control that a gridspot will give you is incredible. So, a while back I ordered some honeycomb grids from saxonpc. It is with two of those gridspots that I took the image on the left, but first thing first. In fact Saxon PC is specializing in making computer cooling solutions, little did they know that their honeycomb is just perfect for light control. OK, they knew, they made a site for it. Yet it was fun to say "little did they know".

One of the first projects on DIYP was a coroplast made gridspot, which totally rocked, but getting those nice black honeycombs tickled so much and I caved in.

In fact this solution is very similar to HonlPhoto's 1/4" and 1/8" gridspot solutions. If you are willing to settle a bit on the looks and spend a few minutes modding, you can save a few Dollars. Not that a few dollars will take you anywhere today.

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What do you get by provoking a guerrilla party? Apparently, if you provoke the right guerrilla party and do it just the right way you can try out one of it's nifty lighting devices.

Bert Stephani had an insightful comment about the "Guerrilla"ness of the Florida based California Sunbounce Guerilla video by Michael Grecco. In short he said that going out to shoot with a bunch of stylists, assistance, hair dressers and models is not really Guerrilla. Bert also suggested showing the Sunbounce guys what's real Guerrilla.

Whadayaknow? They picked the glove and sent Bert their Micro-Mini to try out. Here is the funny yet informative video Bert took:

Hey, this is also a great chance to browse around Bert's site - Confessions of a Photographer. The Great insights and videos will easily chew your evening away.

Grab the full Bert Stephani Video and post here.

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Attending a great software conference like the Agile 2008 conference does have its perks. Aside from the great lectures, fantastic food, and excellent developers to hang out with, you have your freebies. Freebies are the cool little things that vendors will give you to make you come to their booth, and listen to what ever it is they have to offer.

It is only natural that in a software conference you'll get your USB mini-hub, cool agile poker cards, snoot, assorted candies ... did you say snoot?!?!?

Well, not at first sight. One of the Agile consulting companies, Improving Enterprises, was giving away free blue beer holders. Yes, software developers do drink beer hold beer holders. Now, let's see: made out of foam? Check! Will fit a Nikon SB-800? Check! Black interior? Check! Will look professional on a set? Check! Click to continue ›

If you've been reading DIYP for a while now, you know that I am a fool for home made softboxes.

DIYP has featured all kind of softboxes, ranging from small light weight camera strobe to big studio photography strobes. Some are minutes to build and some are hours. Here is a list of some of the better softboxes we've had here on DIYP:

- The Best Softbox Ever (Image is from this project by Nick Wheeler)

- Two Great Weekend Projects - Striplight and Softbox

- Even Better Softbox Part One - The Build Process

- Even Better Softbox Part Two - The Test Results

- a home grown softbox

- Flash Mounted homemade DIY Softbox

One of the trickier parts of growing a softbox at home is the planning. The delicate work done by professionals to calculate the lengths of segments. The gentle work of trigonometry to calculate the angels. Light-less nights spent in dark basements with calipers.

(Actually it is the drawing of the the
individual pieces before you glue them together that is the real hard task)

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Craig Colvin (Flickr) came up with a great design for a gel holder on a flash. The design includes an L shaped plexiglass.

Now, if you ever followed the strobist way of mounting gels on your flash, you know the great value those little pieces of colored tape can provide.

You probably also know that it can very annoying to apply the gel strips on the flash or to remove them. Not to mention stacking them together - this becomes a Velcro hell.

The nice design by Craig solves this problem by providing a Velcro free gel chassis. Sometimes you need nothing more than some bended plexiglass. See Craig's full design and instructions here.

If you can not bend plexiglass yourself you may want to consider using an Acrylic stand. I could only find big ones but I know that there is a smaller version from my local coffee bar.

This got me thinking on alternatives to gel holders and the thing that popped to mind was name tag pockets. Those are pretty cheap and once you place on over your flash, you can freely insert and remove colorful gels.

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More Gels:

- Homemade Gridspot

- Painting With Light

- The Optimizer

- The DIY Speed Strap - Accessories And Samples Click to continue ›