Pilot-ographer wrote:
Ya just never know how valuable (to others) your D-I-Y project might be.

No kidding. My aunt used to know the high school hockey coach in Minneapolis who came up with the idea of putting wheels on ice skates so his team could practice in the summer. Some guy saw it and bought the rights for a whopping $10,000. And that's how the multi-hundred-million-dollar business called Rollerblades(tm) got started.

Eye Designz Photography wrote:
Items needed:
- Small sheet of coroplast
- Inner tube from average motorbike (not the fat wheels)
- Electrical tape
- scissors of razor knife

Cut coroplast into 4"X2" pieces (roughly 5 pieces)
Stack on top of each other (to match the width of your hotshoe flash)
Tape together and spray black to liking
Cut the innertube about 6" to give yourself a fat elastic
Put the stack of coroplast inside the innertube and then attach the innertube to your flash head. it should look very similar to the Honi Grids (see image below)


With this you can create really nice spots using your flash.

I'd love to see a shot using this flash modifier...

Eye Designz Photography wrote:
Items needed:
- Small sheet of coroplast
- Inner tube from average motorbike (not the fat wheels)
- Electrical tape
- scissors of razor knife

Cut coroplast into 4"X2" pieces (roughly 5 pieces)
Stack on top of each other (to match the width of your hotshoe flash)
Tape together and spray black to liking
Cut the innertube about 6" to give yourself a fat elastic
Put the stack of coroplast inside the innertube and then attach the innertube to your flash head. it should look very similar to the Honi Grids (see image below)



Nice!

With this you can create really nice spots using your flash.

T-P wrote:
This is my latest DIY project - a coffee can fresnel




It seems to work well enough, but I have yet to try it on a shoot.

Where'd you get the lens, and have you considered making it focusable with a worm gear of some sort?

I like it! Thanks for the addition.

slave to the lens wrote:

Where'd you get the lens, and have you considered making it focusable with a worm gear of some sort?

I like it! Thanks for the addition.

It's a Arri 4.3" replacement lens and at the opposite end it has a profoto adapter (sp - the cheap adapter).  The profoto adapter allows me some degree of crude focusing.  I did a lot of testing prior to ensure that the can would be the correct depth to work reasonably well.

T-P wrote:

It's a Arri 4.3" replacement lens and at the opposite end it has a profoto adapter (sp - the cheap adapter).  The profoto adapter allows me some degree of crude focusing.  I did a lot of testing prior to ensure that the can would be the correct depth to work reasonably well.

Right on, thanks!

Marcus J. Ranum wrote:
I made my own sweep out of pressboard and underlayment. The floor consists of 4 4x8 underlayment sheets, cut and glued to the floor with silicone glue - aligned so that the cracks won't align with the upper sheets. Then I mounted 2x4s on the wall, and used decking screws to hang more underlayment. On top of the underlayment I used urethane foam glue and "good stuff" urethane insulation to mount 9 4x8 sheets of pressboard. I glued down the ones on the wall and floor, then made big cushiony areas of foam and glue and snapped the curved ones in place so they held against the edges of the ones that were already cured. Total construction time: 2 days. Total cost: $150  (materials have gone up in the last few years)



Total cost to repaint it is $15 (make sure to use ultra-matte or textured paint!) and I can do 2 or 3 shoots between partial paintings. It's much bigger than a paper roll and it's really really solid - no tears in the paper from high heels, etc.

That's a 14-foot high ceiling!!!  Yes, it needs a coat of paint.

Here's another one: I made a lightbox as a sort of mega-cheap softbox for some slow-motion video. My requirement was something that put out a huge amount of light but wouldn't catch on fire, and wasn't quite as soft as a softbox. So I thought "If I make a box out of white-painted luan, and put as many lights as I can in it, until the circuit breakers pop, then put aluminum foil up the back, it ought to make a huge soft beam of light!"

Total cost: $30. Cross-braces inside are cut from oak stock and support lights held to them with woodworkers' clamps:

nice

Robertson Exposure wrote:
Yeah thanks for sharing this, not enough photographers have this DIY mentality and it is a shame.

I mean if we all shot with the exact same stuff, well....

i agree, i mean if we look back at our history, this craft was built with the DIY mentality.