The excellent lighting site Strobist have released their Lighting 101 guide as a free PDF. Check it out!
What’s Strobist? “Teaching you how to use your small flashes, off camera, to get professional results. Your flash photography will never be the same again.”
This only works in low light when you’re shooting near your computer, but if you are, this technique outlined at DIYPhotography.net gets points for bricolage style, cheapness, and ease of use.
Check out Mike Gannaway‘s sweet as flash stand hack! More mounting info on the photo’s page on Flickr.
Via Strobist
Check out photographer Don Brice‘s excellent modification that allows you to use normal flash/strobe units on Diana toy cameras:
I enjoy using the Diana in the studio and shooting portraits and still life lit with flash. I discovered long ago that by ripping off the usual connector on the end of the syncro cable, you could bare the two wires and jam them down the two flash sockets on the Diana-F model. Ta-da. Plug the other in to your strobes and away you go…
Continue reading instructions at Brice’s blog, Blurry Thinking.
Photography enthusiast Nick Pagazani was hindered by the range and fixed location of his camera’s flash. Since his camera has no connector for an external flash, he needed a light-activated slave trigger to fire a remote strobe. It had to ignore the pre-flashes used for red-eye correction and fire only on the main flash. His solution: Use a microcontroller to count pulses from a phototransistor and trigger the strobe at a switch-selectable count. Brighten up your shadowy background with this flashy accessory.
Get parts list and assembly instructions at Design News
Via MAKE Blog
Check out Flickr member Muzzlehatch‘s instructions for making a "light bouncer/diffuser for a camera-mounted external flash to use on macro shots". Here’s the first step, be sure to view all the steps in the MuzzBounce™ Ghetto Flash modifier set.
Via Strobist
Flickr member potatomato posted a photo set on how he made a flash diffusor from a plastic take-away container.
He writes:
The Gary Fong Lightsphere is a flash diffuser that is gaining popularity with wedding and portrait photograhers world wide. His product is selling at a pace that the manufacturer can’t keep up with. This Flickr photoset demonstrates the use of a to-go container to make your own.
View photo set on Flickr
Via MAKE Blog
Strobist have just started a virtual boot camp for anyone interested in improving their lighting skills:
The main point of SBC is to nudge those photographers out there who have not made the transition to actually trying this lighting stuff out to make the jump. Secondarily, we will hopefully all get a chance to see what many different photogs – from all around the world – do with the exact same assignments. You’ll also be able to ask "how’d you do that?" questions to your fellow photographers. Using Flickr, we will effectively become a virtual classroom.
Sign up and read the rules at Strobist
Via PhotographyBLOG
The SSO-CLK (for lack of a more poetic term) is designed to give you the most bang for your buck – with a nod toward extreme portability. It will work well with any camera that can be controlled manually and has a PC synch jack. Most SLR’s, digital or film, fit this bill. The flash is a vintage Nikon model, but it will work off-camera with anything that has a PC jack…
Continue reading at Strobist
Via MAKE Blog
Flickr member idiot king writes, "”I just made a light tent that’s a little larger than this one (it’s 4’x3′) with a roll of paper for the backdrop and bedsheets as diffusers. I think it cost, in total, about $30 for wood and paper. This will come in real handy for portfolio shots!"
Via MAKE Blog