Even though sunny day, we have a cold and windy conditions. Kids are staying home and I had some free time in my hands, so what is a better chance than this to work on some DIY light modifiers?
So I went through couple of DIY tutorials on the web but after all decided to use my own gray matter and work on a design that would fit my strobes and needs. This ain't no astrophysics after all.
The materials are simple:
- One microwave popcorn box - Electrical tape - Painting tape - Five black straws from Ikea - Couple more pieces of cardboard
I started with a grid snoot as I knew this will take most of my time. The popcorn box was surprisingly good for my strobes so that I didn't have to bend the cardboard much at all. I just cut out some of it to make it a nice frame around my 430EX strobes. Black straws I cut so that each was about 3cm in length and I needed 9 straw pieces per row. I placed te cut pieces side by side so that there was no space between them and then I stuck them into the painting tape like in the picture below. By glueing them into the frame would have looked more pro, but takes much more time and patience which I don't have either... especially patience.
When all five rows where in place, I taped all rows together with another round of painting tape.
After this all I had to do was attach the straws into the frame. I created double-sided tape from the electrical tape to attach the straws. When the whole package was done, I wrapped it again with couple of rounds of electrical tape to make the frame stronger. Some of the corners had empty space but I don't see this as a problem.
Below is a picture of what kind of light this grid snoot produces. Because the grid was done with circular straws, the spot will be circlular as well. If you would have rectangular straws the outcome would have been rectangular as well. The shape of the grid snoot does not affect the light shape on the wall.
Next I built a snoot which was a whole lot easier to accomplish. I used the popcorn box for this but you can use your favorit cereal box as well. Just make sure you empty it first.
After I cut out a frame with perfect fit with length of about 15cm, I taped the electrical tape around it to make it strong. Now you can squeeze it flat to fit it in your camera backpack and when you need it you just grab it out and form it according to your needs.
Light travels according to the direction of snoot but disperses some of the light around the target as seen on the picture below.
This snoot procudes a little larger light spot as the grid snoot.
I haven't tried these light modifiers in my portrait shoots yet as my younger models are not up to modelling today. Once I do get them to model for me I will post some results here.
I also built a gobo but since the gobo is just a rectangular cardboard, I will not go into how it was built. Anyone can cut out a rectangular peace of cardboard I would presume.
