Strobist Corner: Mount Your Hot Shoe Strobe On Big Modifiers

Photographer Paulo Rodrigues (Flickr) gave a nice tip on the DIYP Flickr pool.

Problem: I have a ton of modifiers that I attach to my studio monoblocks using speedrings, I can’t get them to work with my hot shoe strobes. This becomes an issue if you are using both hot shoe flashes and monoblocks. Modifiers usually get mounted on a speedring to allow them to attach to a monoblock. Whereas “hot shoe” based modifiers usually use a strap or some clipping device to attach to a speedlight.

The expensive solution:

have an extra modifier for hot shoe flashes (two great options for such modifiers are the Photoflex LiteDome series and the Lastolite Ezy series, both have hotshoe based adapters). However, this will force you to spend extra $$ and take up space and is not easy on travel, well, you get the point…

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot better if you could use your strobes right on your existing modifier/speedring combo? This is where Paulo comes in with a tap and a clamp.

The Ball Banjee DIY:

You can count on David Hobby to come up with a clever solution for this, using two Ball Banjees crossed, you can create a fitting for your strobe. This works (I tried it), but will take years of your life on scare.

The Multipurpose Solution:

The nice thing about this solution is that you only need a 3/8 BSW tap (hey US folks, make sure you get the British type) and a clamp (like this one) and they would take care of all your speedring needs. Now, Paulo shows this trick for the Bowens speedring, but I assume this will work with any speedring that has a bottom thread.