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Quick Tip: How To Make Colorful Light Paintings With Lee Filters And A Bubble Blower

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Photographer and light painter Hugo Baptista sent in a clever tip on using a hacked bubble blower and a pack or Lee filters to create some interesting light painting.

The idea is to use the rotating end of the bubble blower (i.e. removing the bubbly part) to make a rotating filter fan. Hugo used a pack of old Lee filters, but any colored gel will do. The color plate is then rotated in front of the lens in a long exposure so the light coming from any light painting object will “shift” colors. Here is how Hugo describes it: I bought a $5 bubble blower, took its fan off and attached a round panel of LEE sample filters cut into squares brought together with transparent tape. I then made the filters rotate in front of the lens while I was light painting the scene.[Read More…]

Quick Tip: A Fun Introduction To How The Light Blaster Works For Backdrops

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The folks over at Creative Live just kicked off a new shiny blog, and we are humbled and honored that their first gear review is for the Light Blaster.

If you waned to see how the Light Blaster works for backdrops, Topher and Dana explain how to put together a quick & dirty setup for fast backdrop swapping.

[Gear Review: Fun Portraits with the Light-Blaster | CretiveLive][Read More…]

Quick Tip: Free-lensing SLR Lenses With Micro 4/3 Bodies

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Here is a great free-lensing tip courtesy of DIYP reader Timothy Blair. In a nutshell, free-lensing is creating a tilt/shift lens by separating a lens from the camera body and holding it by hand. You can read a few tutorials on the method here and here.

The problem is that free-lensing with a full sized DSLR lens on a micro 4/3 body leave quite a bit of a gap for dust to sneak in on your sensor.

Timothy built a sweet and quick free-lensing adapter that stops both the light and the dust from creeping into the sensor. The adapter is built from a hollowed out rear lens cap and a bicycle inner tube. The two flaps keeps the light and dust out while hand holding that lens.[Read More…]

Quick Tip: Using Battery Upsizers For External Strobe Power

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One of the ways to increase the time a strobe or a camera can run for a longer durations, is to use an external battery for power. Some cameras and strobes have a dedicated port for receiving external power, and some don’t. But even if they do, the device that provides power is usually a propitiatory one and only fits one specific device, so the cable to power an SB800 is different than the cable you’d use for, say, a Canon EX strobe (assuming you have both :)

There is a solution to get around this power problem. Use whatever external power you can source with the built in battery chamber, mimicking a battery set. The options we shared before involved crafting a wooden dowel to fit the exact size of a battery, or using uncommon electrical connectors for the same end.

Reader Jake Carvey just shared a cool tip regarding this method with us. One that made me slam my head into the table. Jake suggested using battery upsizers for mimicking the internal batteries, eliminating the need of a wooden dowel. [Read More…]

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