Of course, the perils of leaving food out if you have squirrels in the area are that they invade your feeding stations.
The following shots were actually taken last week, before the previous post on setting up the feeding stations. Sadly, we’ve not had any black squirrels on a day where I had the camera handy, but I’m sure they’ll be back.
I recently saw a tutorial for a home-made beauty dish for flash photography & decided to give it a go myself. This is basically just another item designed to diffuse the harsh light from flashguns when taking portraits.
The dish consists of a rounded garden plant container & a plastic CD container painted white & used to deflect light from the flashgun onto the subject.
The components were made up of a pot from a local garden centre. I had searched several DIY outlets & not found one. Unfortunately, after paying £5.99 at a local garden centre, my wofe advised me that they were quite expensive at that particular centre, so you can probably find them cheaper if you look around the garden centres.
An item recommended on the website I saw this on originally, used a black plastic rectangular tube affair which is used to slide the flash head into the pot. It’s part of a drainpipe connector widely available in the States, but I couldn’t find anything similar at Focus, Homebase, B & Q & a couple of local shops. We must have a different gutter system because the nearest I could find were square & slightly narrower than the width of my flash head. I originally planned to use the metal brackets seen in my picture here, but found I didn’t actually need them as I cut a hole just a little wider than the flashgun & when sliding it into the opening it forms a really nice, tight fit, so won’t fall off without some work.
I cut holes in the plant container & the CD container & screwed the black plastic CD base onto the inside of the plant pot.
The CD top just slips into the base as it does when it’s full of CDs. The original design calls for a convex mirror fitted inside the CD top to reflect light back into the pot so it can be diffused from the pot out onto the subject. Apparently these are available for a few dollars in USA at car parts shops but I;ve not found any locally yet, so until I o, I’m using the reflective surface of a CD disc.
A few coats of enamel spray paint - black outside & white inside - later & the DIY Beauty Dish is complete.
Now all I have to do is to test it out, when I can find a willing volunteer to pose for some shots!
I currently have the Sigma EF-500 DG Super flashgun. For diffusing I bought one of the Stofen Omnibounce flash difffusers which is a small white plastic cup which fits over the front of the flashgun. Unfortunately, last time I used it out & about at a music festival it appears to have slipped off the flashgun & I’ve not seen it since.
I tried to get a new one at my local photography shop, they said they’d ring me when one came in, but they never did.
I had a ‘flash’ of inspiration & decided to make my own.
In order to make a diffuser like this you’ll need the following:
This is what I used to make my diffuser, a 2 pint milk bottle. I don’t drink milk so I don’t know whether it’s the same for all milk bottles but this one came from Morrisons, it has a handy ridge around the handle end which I’ve outlined in black pen in the picture. Using this ridge as a guide I cut around the ridge with a scalpel & discarded the lid/handle end. This leaves a scoop-type end to the plastic which is the end that goes over the flash head.
In order to fix the diffuser to the flashgun I’ve fixed some velcro around the carton. I bought 1M strips of sticky-backed velcro in my local branch of Wilkinsons. It cost 99p.
I’ve used one longer strip of the hook side of velcro & stuck that the the outside of the carton. I then used 2 shorter strips of the eye side of velcro & stuck those to each end of the hook sections, fixing them to the inside of the carton.
As an addition to the diffuser I have an optional reflector which I can fit inside the diffuser if I want some extra light. I fix this with an additional piece of velcro just inside the main part of the carton, you can see it in this next shot, it’s white velcro in this shot.
Next I made the reflector which fits inside the diffuser for extra oomph. I made this with some cut offs of mounting board, but any card will do. I measured out the rough area inside the diffuser. I made the back plate & top plate which are the same width & then added two side panels which are about an inch wide. I stuck them together with tape to form the shape you can see in the photo & then covered it with tin foil from the kitchen, fixing it down with double-sided selotape. I added some Velcro to the back of it to hold it in place when it’s inside the diffuser.
Here you can see the refelctor & how it fits inside.
Once the build is finsihed you can then fit it to the flashgun:
This is the completed article. It gives a nice height above the camera. You can use it in either portrait or landscape mode, but if you use it in portrait mode the diffuser has to be fitted to the thinner edge of the flashgun to enable the flashgun to be swivelled. The downside is that the light then comes from slightly off centre unlike in normal landscape mode.
So that’s it, total time to make is under half an hour & the total cost was about 30p.
So what results does it give?
Well, the idea of any diffuser is to diffuse the sharp harsh light of the flashgun to give a more pleasing effect, this is especially important for people & portrait shots. We don’t generally want harsh shadows on skin.
Unfortunately, as I lost my Stofen, I can’t do some test shots to compare them like for like but I think it would probably compare quite favourably, considering I could make 50 milk bottle diffusers for the same price as a Stofen.
Here are the test shots I did. All shots were taken on manual settings in RAW. They have not had any enhancements other than slight sharpening in Lightroom, the exposure & colours were not changed at all.
In each set the first shot is straight flash, second is with the diffuser without the reflector fitted & the third is with the reflector fitted. All taken with Canon 20D & Canon 50mm 1.8 Mk II
1/250 f5
1/125 f5
1/125 f2
Well, I hope you’ll agree the 30p Milk Carton Diffuser seems to make a pretty good job as a flash attachment.
If you have any questions or suggestions for improvements, please let me know.
Posted under Photo Equipment, Photo Tutorials