Home Depot Week: Backgrounds

This week we are working our way through the aisles of the Big Orange Store, but this stuff is not necessarily specific to Home Depot. Many of these things can be found at just about any big hardware store, and the idea is to think frugally and creatively when scrounging for lighting and photo gear.
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I could spend all day wandering around a Home Depot or a Lowes store. So many possibilities: Hardware, lighting, backdrops, DIY supplies -- I get tingly just thinking about it.

Today, however, we are beginning in the paint aisle, looking for backdrops. HD has 'em in just about any size you want, only they call them drop cloths. These are washable canvas and they are dirt cheap.

How cheap? How 'bout under $10 for a 6x9-foot canvas?

More, including a link to a discussion on how to paint it and another way cool backdrop idea after the jump.

My photo "to-do" list is long, and growing. And one of the things on it is to paint a studio backdrop. I did one in college, and used it a lot. In fact, I got so much use out of it I had to pawn it off on another shooter, lest I become a 5'6" walking cliché of myself.

If you have the time and inclination, a roll-up painted backdrop is a no-brainer. $10 for canvas, $10 for paint and a coupla bucks for 2x2's at each end to form a roll-up structure. I'll be going into more detail on the process when I get a round tuit and make one, but no trip to Home Depot would be complete without passing by the bargain basement canvas backdrop aisle.

There is discussion on how to paint it here and more to be had if you do a little Googling. If you find a really good tutorial, throw us a bone in the comments.
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Counter Culture

And here's another idea that's a little off the wall: What about counter-top laminate as a backdrop? I was looking at the selection in Big Orange and there were some very nice portrait backdrops if you think of those counters vertically.

They come in 4x8-foot sheets for about $50. I would mount them to a sheet of 1/2" MDF board and collect them, if I had a permanent studio space. Two holes drilled through at the top, and on one side, would make them very easy to temporarily mount via pegs in a wall.

Vertical for single portraits, and horizontal for group head-and-shoulders shots. (The 4x8' thing would be your limiting factor.)

Very durable, and pretty cheap. And the dark, shiny colors are great for those specular background shots.

And just to show you my sophisticated studio for shooting this kind of stuff, here's a setup shot:

My "light stand" came from the rag drawer, the soft box came from the printer (with a minimal amount of origami) and the flash is a 20-year-old SB-26. It was triggered using the slave mode from the on-board flash, which was gobo'd with my hand so it would not contribute to the lighting.

Lighting 101: Build a Pro PC Cord, Pt. 2

Repeating the important note from part one: There are those who believe that using household-style sync cords poses an inherent risk in that they could be mistakenly plugged into an AC outlet. That said, building a sync cord based on HH plugs is inexpensive, reliable and convenient. Which is why many pro's use them as primary (or backup) synching systems.

The cord I have designed uses two very short, male-PC-to-male-household, store-bought cords and a main cord composed of a FEMALE HOUSEHOLD TO FEMALE HOUSEHOLD main body. As such, the extension cord itself is quite impossible to plug into the wall.

In twenty-plus years as a pro, I have never met a photographer who was involved in the kind of an accident as described above. But if this is the kind of thing that just keeps you awake at night, simply gaffer tape up the plugs where they join. If you are worried that someone is going to dive for your PC cord, untape it, rip it apart and plug the little 6" part into the wall, I can't help you. Buy some Pocket Wizards.

Alternatively, you may wish to substitute a 1/4 mono plug or 1/8 mono-mini plug in place of the respective HH plugs. But you'll peobably have to do some soldering.

This is also an alternative if US-style HH plugs are not available in your country.

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First of all, here are the sources for the parts.

(2) Short, PC Male-to-Household cord (where to get it): Varies - as little as $10 for a short one
(2) Female plug adapters from Home Depot: $2.98 each, or $5.96
(2) Ball-bungees (Home Depot, WalMart, etc:) Less that $1.00
16 gauge zip cord at $0.24 a foot at Home Depot: $4.80 for 20 feet

The process for each end is the same, so you will do this twice. You'll need a knife, scissors, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers (or your teeth.) Very easy stuff, even for the not-so-handy types.

Using scissors, cut about one inch down the notch between the two parts of the wire, as shown.

Make sure you stay inside the notch on your cut.

Using a sharp knife at about 1/2 inch from the end, cut through the rubber insulation to the metal wire. Do not cut the wire. If in doubt about where you are, stop, bend the wire and check. Flip the wire over and do the same thing.



Next, grasp the insulation on the tips of each of the two wires, twist it and pull it off. You may wish to grasp it with pliers. I used my teeth. Please do not tell my wife. Now, twist the wires (individually) to make the easier to bend and connect later. Your wire ends will now look like this, with two stripped wires.

Bend the little stripped ends into a "U," as shown. Repeat the same process for the other end of the wire. (This is the extent of the cutting/stripping/pliers grasping part.)

Get your female plug end and open it up with a screwdriver. This plug shown is the one from Home Depot. (If yours is different, figure it out. Should be really easy.)

Your wire should have labeling of some kind that runs along one of the two sides. Almost all wire does now. If not, grasp one end of the wire and make a mark on one half of it. Now pull it through your hands and get to the other end so you can make a similar mark on the same half of the wire.

(You wire will almost certainly have markings already on it, if you look closely.)

Next, take your little bent wires and connect them as shown. The plug ends will be "polarized," which means one slot will be a little longer than the other. This is why we are keeping track of which wire is which. You'll want to connect the same wire half to the long slot at each end of the wire, and vice versa. It is easy, and it will help to protect your camera.

Now, prepare to close the plug. Make sure the wire will not be pierced by the screw, as shown. Close it up. The plug should clamp the wire firmly. If not, open it back up and wrap a little black electrical tape around it. But most plugs clamp automatically.

Repeat the process at the other end, and your work is pretty much done. I hope this was as easy for you as it seemed to me. If you just follow the steps carefully, you should be fine. I tested it on my five-year-old, and he assembled a half just fine. :) (And yes, I tested it it well. The point is, you can do this even if you do not normally do handi-man stuff.)

Now, just plug the PC cords into each end and attach whatever you are using for strain relief.

There you are.

Here is an example of how I hang it on my flash when I am using it. I usually stick the other ball bungee around my lens at the other end of the cord. The important thing is not to have that PC connection carrying the weight and/or wiggling around.













Next: Soft Light: Umbrellas

Lighting 101: Build a Pro Synch Cord, Pt. 1

Important note: There are those who believe that using household-style sync cords poses an inherent risk in that they could be mistakenly plugged into an AC outlet. That said, building a sync cord based on HH plugs is inexpensive, reliable and convenient. Which is why many pro's use them as primary (or backup) synching systems.

The cord I have designed uses two very short, male-PC-to-male-household, store-bought cords and a main cord composed of a FEMALE HOUSEHOLD TO FEMALE HOUSEHOLD main body. As such, the extension cord itself is quite impossible to plug into the wall.

In twenty-plus years as a pro, I have never met a photographer who was involved in the kind of an accident as described above. But if this is the kind of thing that just keeps you awake at night, simply gaffer tape up the plugs where they join. If you are worried that someone is going to dive for your PC cord, untape it, rip it apart and plug the little 6" part into the wall, I can't help you. Buy some Pocket Wizards.

Alternatively, you may wish to substitute a 1/4 mono plug or 1/8 mono-mini plug in place of the respective HH plugs. But you'll peobably have to do some soldering.

This is also an alternative if US-style HH plugs are not available in your country.

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In retrospect, I was pretty hard on synch cords. I made the jump to wireless about ten years ago. The Pocket Wizards have been a Godsend.

But I also remember what it was like to try to cobble together a lighting bag on almost no budget. Wireless remotes to not fit into that bill at all. And the very last thing I want to do is to have those mui-expensivo Pocket Wizards scare someone out of learning how to light off camera. So here goes.

The last synch cord I was using before I went wireless is the synch cord I am going to show you how to make. It is designed to be cheaper, more durable and more reliable than the one-piece, store-bought cords. And it can be made very long - I have used 75-foot versions with good results - for very little extra money.

It is made with two Household-to-PC cords, one at each end. The middle is basically an extension cord with "female" fittings at each end.

(If you do not know what the "female" part means, I am not going to be the one to tell you. Think about it.)

At each end is a short household male-to-PC cord (where to get it.) This will plug into your camera or one of those PC tips on the cheap Nikon SB-24's (or any other PC-equipped Nikon strobe.)

If you are going with another flash brand (with a different connector) I will leave it to you to figure out how you'll connect it. Please put your comments at the end of this post to share with others if you do. No secrets here.

You will also place a 6- or 8-inch ball bungee at each end, for strain relief. The tips on PC cords are vulnerable, and also the expensive part. You want the PC connection to stay still. You also want the cord to be supported by something, and not hanging by the PC connection at either end. This is how your cord will last a very long time.

The middle of the cord is 16-gauge "zip" cord, or lamp cord as some people call it. You can buy it in bulk. Why? It is durable as heck. Wiggle it all you want. No problem.

It is also easily replaced or repaired. Say you made a 20-foot synch cord and now you need a 35-foot one. You could just replace the cheapo lamp cord in the middle in about 5 minutes (if that) with a 35-foot section, for less that $7 at Home Depot (which is my favorite photo store, because I am a certified cheapskate!) The stuff is only 24 cents a foot. Schwing.

So, what you're going to make is basically a 20 foot extension cord with female fittings at each end. Then you'll plug the PC-to-household male 6" cords into each end, put on the ball-bungee strain relief, and, as they say in the cool Guy Ritchie movies, Bob's your uncle. (That mean's, "you're done.")

Why female at each end of the main cord? Because females are smarter than males. No, no, no. Because this will make it impossible for some "helpful" bystander to plug your synch cord into an AC outlet that way. (Which will do very interesting smelly, smoky things to your digital camera...)

Also, keeping the cord the same at both ends means that you can elect to get a third PC cord to keep as a backup, and it'll work at either end. And you can make it longer in a pinch by adding a normal extension cord.

So, let's run the numbers before we get into the how-to's.

(2) Short, PC Male to Household cord (where to get it): Varies - as little as $10 for a short one
(2) Female plug adapters from Home Depot: $2.98 each, or $5.96
(2) Ball-bungees (Home Depot, WalMart, etc:) Less that $1.00
16 gauge zip cord at $0.24 a foot at Home Depot: $4.80 for 20 feet

You are more than welcome to buy an all-in-one cord, but the long ones get expensive. The zip-cord way allows you durability, length-flexibility and cost savings over the long, one-piece models.

If your flash does not have a PC jack, you can add a "household" synch terminal to it by getting a Household to Hotshoe adapter (where to get it) which is a great idea, as it means you only need to get one small PC cord to connect the zip-cord-based PC cord to your camera. Everything else - even multiple flashes - can be done with cheap household connectors.

Whichever you choose, make sure to use the strain relief at the PC connections (bungee, rubber band, string, whatever.) That is the big secret to making a cord last for a long time.

Next: Building a Pro PC Cord, Pt. 2

Adding (and Synching) a Second Strobe

In addition to being cheap, both the Starving Student Off-Camera Light Kit and the (included) Pro Synch Cord were designed to be expandable.

You start lighting things enough, and you'll get the itch to add a second light to your gear bag.

Getting the second light/stand/umbrella/etc. is easy enough. You just crack the wallet, take the hit, and go. And if you will be working at close range a Nikon SB-26 is an ideal second strobe, as it includes a decent optical slave to synch it to the first light.

But if one of your lights is not an SB-26, or you will be working at greater distances, or if you do not want others' flashes to set off your #2 light, you'll have to synch them via radio remote or hardwire. If you already have a set of Pocket Wizards, you can buy a second receiver separately for about half the cost of a full set. Problem solved.

But if you are working on a budget, the Pro Synch Cord is modular, and easily (and cheaply) expandable.

What you'll need:

• One more PC Male to Household Male synch cord: $5.95 at Adorama
• A three way AC splitter adapter: ~$2.00 at WalMart, Home Depot, etc.
• Two normal extension cords: $2.00 and up, depending on the length, at WalMart, Home Depot, etc.

If you have a couple of extension cords at home, you are out the door for less than $8.00. If not, these extension cords can do double duty at home for other uses. I saw a 50', heavy duty cord for $10 at Home Depot this weekend, so you can get your flashes far away from each other for very little money.

(You can also nix the 2nd cord by plugging your first PC Male to Household Male cord right into the splitter. Just ball bungee (or rubberband) the junction to your light stand for strain relief, just like we discussed on the PC cord page.)

The diagram shows what you need. If you have built a Pro Synch Cord, you already have everything in black. The blue stuff is the new stuff, and the diagram shows how it goes together. Click on it for a big version.

If it looks complicated, it's not. And cheap and reliable, too.

Three notes:

1) Feel free to snip off the grounding pin on the splitter (use needle-nosed pliers) so it will fit into your homemade female-to-female AC cord. Just do not use the splitter for actual AC appliances after doing that. Mark it with a sharpie to warn others.

2) Plug both of your PC/Household cords into the extension cords (or splitter) using the same orientation. This will make fore more reliabe synching, and be safer for your camera.

3) As always, avoid plugging older strobes (or big, studio strobes) directly into electronis cameras. They can fry the synch circuit. Nikon SB-24 and newer strobes are safe. Some older Vivitar 283's are not.

David Greene on Ghetto Fluorescent Strip Lights

David Greene does a great job of walking you through Home Depot's lighting aisle and shows you exactly what you need, how to mount them to stands, etc.

FWIW, I can see lots more possibilities for this beyond split 45's against the wall. I'd at least pull her (and the lights) out away from the wall to drop the tone of the background for more tonal separation.

Think what you could do with four of these babies, adding one on each back side as a rim/separation light. They could also look pretty sharp (in front) done high/low, strip-light-clamshell style.

This is a good way to get a "look" with people wearing glasses, too. There is so little horizontal width to the light source that you can just let the reflections hang out away from the eyes. (Example here.)

Just checking my local Home Depot, the fixtures (in red!) are only $21.97 each. Just remember to get the 5000k tubes. And I sure am glad that I am not the only one who hears rock guitars when I walk through Home Depot trying to score some cheap lights...

(Thanks for the tip, Manblu.)

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Home Depot Week: More Backgrounds

Ever wish your commanding officer significant other would let you have a section of the wall to paint as a backdrop in any style you choose whenever you want?

You can, if you are willing to spend seven bucks. That's what a sheet of 4x8', 1/2" drywall goes for these days. If you are doing the home studio thing, or shooting in your garage, it's a no brainer. And at $7 plus the cost of paint, you can do one any time you want a visual theme to tie together a series of portraits or product shots.

(More after the jump.)
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For the portraits, you would just lean the painted sheet against a wall very carefully. ("I promise won't mess it up, honey!") Then pull out your speedlights and you are in business.

FWIW, I am lobbying for a permanent section of the basement as "paintable backdrop space" in our next house. (It's not looking great at this point, but I am very early in the process. I'll keep you posted.)

Granted, drywall looks like crap until you paint it. But no worries, as HD can help you there, too. They have people in the paint section just dying to tell you how to sponge, rag, roll, splatter, exfoliate -- whatever you want.

There are brochures in the color palette areas of the paint display that will get you thinking. Or you can go with a solid color if you want.

Wanna get one of those cool specular background shots, for instance? Just paint with a semi-gloss and choose a dark color. Bingo.

One particularly good book that they offer is "Decorative Painting: Expert Advice from Home Depot" ($14.95.) It contains more ideas for painted backdrops than you can shake a stirring stick at.

The drywall thing is not just for portraits, either. You can cut the stuff easily and make a corner out of two 4x4 pieces. Presto, instant alcove for still-life shots.

Here's a trick: To cut the drywall, you score one side with a utility knife (using a straight edge as a guide) and gently snap it. Do this carefully, and you can preserve the paper on the opposite side to make a nice, joined temporary corner for a shoot.

As for location, if you have no place inside that is suitable for shooting just lean your custom drywall backdrop against the side of a building on the shade side (or in the evening) and shoot away.

Home Depot Homebrew of $643 Profoto Globe Saves You Enough to Buy a Paul Buff Einstein to Put it On

For the second time in a week, a Paul Buff mod that is so simple I wonder why I hadn't thought of it earlier. This one is via Houston-based photographer Stephen Hébert.

This Home Depot version of the famed Profoto Globe will set you back all of $10. I have seen people hacking these for Profoto lights using SP-systems mounts and/or gaffer's tape. But the fact that they mount right to an AB or Einstein is, like, poetic justice or something.

If you are really slick (and handy) you might want to try to drill some holes around the base for heat venting. And I am guessing the color temp is, er, "close enough."

But having enough money left over from the savings to buy the actual flash (and an additional $130 in other accessories) is icing on the cake.

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Amp Your Backlight with a Cheapo, Disposable Fog Machine

Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon cruising my local big orange store for an upcoming "Home Depot" week here on Strobist. Yep, a whole week of cheapskate, hardware-themed DIY fun.

The goal is to have the posts pre-written for late October, so I will not have to spend my entire week in Paris attached to a laptop. I have long since considered HD as tightwad photo gear heaven. Given that, I walked in with notebook and pen in hand, ready to scrounge. Two hours later I walked out with a cool list and more new ideas than I could shake a stick at.

But this particular find was too perishable to hold until late October. Get the full details on the dirt-cheap fog machine after the jump.

(Cool, fogged-up backlit photo by mwreeve)
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1983 Called. They'd Like Their Lighting Back.

Nothing makes hard, strobed backlight look cooler than a bunch of smoky fog wafting around, making those cool beams and layered tones. A little '80's if done too over-the-top. But lotsa possibilities, all the same. Sadly, the professional model fog machines are mid-three digits to start.

Fortunately, America's insatiable appetite for tacky, over-the-top Halloween decor is your temporary ticket to a fog machine for just $29.95. But as you might imagine, at that price there are catches.

Number one, they won't be around long. HD has them in the pagan holiday tacky decor section. And that opportunity is fleeting, for obvious reasons. You can also apparently get them at Wal*Mart, Michaels, and a few other companies I have never heard of. Ditto the Halloween-themed, fly-by-night stores at your local mall.

Number two, at $29.95 it does not come with the water-based fog fluid. So that'll set you back a few more bucks.

Finally, (and this is why I refer to it as "disposable,") the fluid can reportedly sometimes get too thick and gum up the machine. But it is water based, so my game plan is to dilute it a little with water and thicken it back up juuuust until I get decent fog. (I like to tinker.)

In fact, your local Home Depot may or may not carry the fog fluid just for that reason. So call around to find out who has the whole set before you waste the gas.

UPDATE: Check out the anti-clogging solution by RootyB in the comments.

Hey, it's $29.95. If it holds up for one good shoot it's worth it for a chance to play with smoky backlight. (I'll bet Keith Taylor would have liked to have it for that fireman shot.)
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(Fog Machine Product Page, at Gemmy.com.)

I am Glam. Glam I am.

Arizona-based photographer Don Giannatti has produced a multimedia DVD entitled, "Lighting Essentials 1".

Basically, he shows you how to make the lighting version of stone soup out of a couple of Home Depot work lights, some translucent material and some foam core boards. He moves to speedlights and bigger strobes, but the reflective and diffusion techniques are pretty much universal.

If you are into shooting models' headshots, senior portraits or anything of that ilk - or aspire to be - this would get you well on your way to being able to make some very cool-looking people shots on an utterly draconian budget.

He's talking under $100.

You're using the foam core to turn the small hot lights (or a speedlight) into a huge bee-yu-tee-ful light source - the kind that spackles over the wrinkles and hides the zits before you even open the portrait in Photoshop.

The scope of the material is centered around that classic, soft, "glam" lighting.

You basement portrait shooters would do well to get some big sheets of foam core and learn how to use them. Yeah, they're big. But they are thin and you can store them under your bed. Foam core really can do neat stuff.

Don also shows you some good Photoshop techniques and gets into Photoshop actions, too.

As for the DVD itself, it's a browser-based maze of short movies, j-pegs and tutorials. There are also folders filled with extras such as fonts and Photoshop actions.

The movies gave my browser fits. But then my computer is so old you start it with a crank in the front. When I just opened the folders and dragged the movies into my Quicktime viewer, they worked fine.

The QT movies are a low-budget, camcorder-on-auto-exposure affair. Lighting-wise, they do not do the final stills justice.

But that's not the point. The main takeaways from the DVD are (a) that you can do some very Hollywood-looking stuff right out of the electrical aisle at Home Depot, and (b) that foam core, properly placed, can work lighting magic.

He gives seminars out in sunny (but beautifully fill-lit) Arizona, and these lessons are taken right from those seminars. For people looking to move into the glam lighting scene, the principles are sound to teach you to create that beautiful, wraparound lighting that can pay the bills.

Just be ready to bail on the browser interface and explore the movies manually if you need to.

:: Don's main site ::

:: Lighting Essentials 1 page ::

SLC-OE-06 Chocolate Box Studio

I am happy to announce my brand new studio. It features hardwood floors and a seamless, backlit ceiling as its primary light source.

Sadly, like many studios, this one is a little on the small side: it measures exactly one cubic foot. But that's fine, as this workspace was designed specifically for one subject: chocolates.

Today, we'll be harkening back to the roots of this website, namely working with cardboard and glue to solve a problem for next to nothing. Read more »

On Assignment: How To Light a Comet

As you might imagine, I have a lot of photos on my walls at home. Some of the photos (and the people who took them) are famous. And others are of my family or some of the places we have been.

My very favorite photo (not counting the ones of my kids - I am a proud dad) is a wonderfully engineered shot of the Comet Hale-Bopp as it passed by the Earth in 1997. It was taken by John Moran, who was one of my early mentors when I was still a freshly minted photojournalist.

John was a very good general assignment photographer for the Gainesville Sun in Florida. But he excelled at dreaming up these spectacular feature photos that required months of advance thinking.

While he was shooting his daily grind of newspaper work, he would be arranging the details of a killer photo. Then it would show up, without warning, on the front of the Gainesville Sun one morning, prompting you to strongly consider getting into another line of work.

Like, say, plumbing.

Once he took a strobe out to an alligator-filled swamp at twilight, which made their eyes glow in a way made you consider your potential role as their dinner.

Another time, he made a multiple exposure of the sun's full track across the sky on the winter solstice.

And in 1997, he drove out to the countryside to shoot a picture of a comet. I am going to let him tell you in his own words how he did it. But first I want you to consider the exposure and light-balancing challenges he faced to pull it all onto one frame of Fujicolor 800 ASA 35mm film.

1) The background - which contains the very dim comet - is at about 5 minutes at f/2.8 at 800 ASA. And that's the bright part.

2) The background, from your Earthly perspective, appears to be slowly rotating. This rotation will come into play during your 5-minute exposure time.

3) The image will need a foreground element for added interest and depth. And that part happens to be darker than the background. So you'll need to light it.

And you are going to solve all of this with about $10 spent at the Home Depot. And a heckuva lot of ingenuity.

So, here's John, telling you how he did it. And then you can see the photo.


The World is a Miraculous Place: Comet Hale-Bopp, 1997
(By John Moran)

Of all the interests we have in childhood, it's hard to know which we will carry forth into adulthood. Though astronomy was my earliest passion in life, I was soon to learn that math is the language of science, and that my love for the night sky would not sustain a career in astronomy. But I discovered photography at about that time, and was soon happily bumbling my way through some really awful nighttime pictures. The seeds were sown.

I cannot recall all the pictures I've made that reflect my early interest in astronomy, but I do recall vividly a picture I didn't make, a beautiful picture of Comet Hyakutake that was published nationwide in 1996. Distributed by the Associated Press, the photo by Johnny Horne of the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer-Times, showed the comet drifting past the Big Dipper. I was impressed by its clarity and aesthetics, and I felt humbled by my lack of preparation to make a photo of this caliber. But the world of astronomy was already abuzz with the approach of Comet Hale-Bopp, and I resolved not to let the Big One get away. I had a year to prepare...

I wanted to make a picture of the comet that not only was beautiful, but was clearly grounded in the landscape of Florida. Among the many impressive natural features of this place we call home, live oaks -- dead or alive -- hold particular allure. I had just the right tree in mind for my picture. For a hundred years and counting, comets, eclipses, meteors and more have added drama to the night sky beneath which this ancient live oak has borne silent witness.

Deep-sky photography typically involves long time exposures with precisely guided instruments that track the apparent movement of the stars through the night sky. I consulted with astronomy professor Alex Smith at the University of Florida, with whom I had taken an introductory course twenty years earlier. He showed me a simple-but-effective tracking device he had made to photograph the return of Halley's Comet in 1986. I built my own, based on his design. Called a barn-door tracker, the gizmo consists of a pair of 1x4 boards joined with a hinge that is aligned to turn on axis with the rotation of the Earth. The rig is anchored to a tripod and the camera is mounted on a ballhead attached to the top board.
     
I replaced the hinge pin with a brass tube for sighting on the North Star, and by manually turning at 1 rpm a 1/4-20 thumbscrew offset 11-7/16" from the hinge pivot, the boards spread, moving the camera, slowly... The world is a miraculous place, and it was a beautiful experience sitting alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere with my little comet tracker, hand-cranking my camera in silent synchronicity with the Universe.
       
The photograph was made with a Nikon FE2 camera and 35mm lens on Fuji Super G 800 film. The exposure was 5 minutes at f/2.8. The tracking motion, while "freezing" the stars (and comet), creates a ghostly blur in the oak tree and the distant tree line. Radio-triggered strobes with amber gels cross-illuminate the tree. Two-and-a-half minutes into the exposure, a Nikon soft-focus filter was placed onto the lens, causing the celestial objects to glow around their central points of light.

Nice, huh?

Everybody needs good, early influences. I was very lucky to have John as one of mine.

He eventually left his newspaper staff job to follow his true calling and become a full-time, Florida-based nature photographer. You can see more of his work at www.johnmoranphoto.com.

There, you'll find many different prints (including the comet shot and the alligator photo) which can be purchased.

He also has a book, Journal of Light, if you would like to own more of his work.

All photos in this article © John Moran, 1997.

Next: Test Driving the DIY Softbox Grid Spot

Build a DIY Portable North Light Photo Studio

Six years ago, I wrote on Strobist about how to build a $10 macro studio. Since then over a million photographers have seen how they could easily take control of light—any light—to easily produce professional quality product photos.

Four years later while brainstorming with my friend Mohamed Somji about how to light an upcoming photo project, I started thinking about how to reproduce this type of studio on a human-sized scale.

Turns out, it's not so hard. Read more »

Ring Flash Week: Building the HD Ring Flash

I just didn't have the heart to force-feed you another donut. Even Krispy Kremes get old after three days in a row. Logo or not...
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So, here's the main structural component of the ring flash. A 16" concrete form tube. ($10.67 at Home Depot.)

This stuff is so useful for DIY goodies. I have seen giant Dobsonian telescopes made out of this. And some killer speakers, too. (No standing waves in a cylindrical design.)

I made this two days after Halloween, if you couldn't tell. More after the jump.
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The height of your device will be determined by the length of your lens and body, including shade. Since mine was a tele, I gave the PVC tube a couple of extra inches as a auxiliary shade, so to speak.

You could make this using a wide lens. But the longer it is, the more room for the flash light to disperse inside. And thus, the more even the light on the front diffuser.

I traced a line around the cardboard tube and cut it easily with a jigsaw. I never once made a measurement in the whole process. Just eyeballed, drew the line and cut. As a guy, I am rather proud of that. And it is no loss on your end, as your dimensions will be determined by the camera and lens combo you choose to design it around.

I cheated it a couple of inches on each end (extra PVC for shade and a little extra cardboard tube at the back.) I wanted decent depth for good internal flash throw. Worked out fine.

I traced the tube and the PVC (also cut to length with a jigsaw) to create the donut/washer shape for my front Plexi diffuser. I screwed up the cutting with a jigsaw, so mine had cracks (none fatal) that I had to shore up with clear packing tape. Before taping, I also sanded it on both sides to frost it. (It was not enough, as we saw yesterday, so I ended up with an addition sheet of paper inside for more diffusion.)

This shot shows how the tube and hand-bent aluminum plate brackets mount together. It is important to allow for the bolts in the PVC when checking to see if it will be thick enough for your chosen lens.

If you look at the large version, it should be easy to see how the pieces go together. The camera mounting plate is sandwiched between the PVC and one of the brackets.

You can see the "L" brackets that hold the Plexi to the cardboard tube and PVC here, too. That cardboard tube is tough. May as well be wood.

The bracket assembly bolts to the cardboard concrete form tube, making for a very solid final unit. It went together more easily than I expected.

I think the key is transferring the correct "inner tube" to "outer tube" distance for your aluminum brackets. Get that right, and you are pretty much home free.

Here is the whole thing, put together. The flashes ball-bungee to via two sets of two holes on each side. You'll need a strap, too. Put the strap holes at about 90 degrees apart and it'll ride better on your shoulder. You'll still look like a geek, tho.

You can see the paper disc inside at the bottom here, too.

I used foil-backed tape on the outside of the PVC tube all the way around. This got the light to bouncing around on the inside. I put foil-backed tape pretty much everywhere but near the flashes on the outside. Flashes are fired at the widest setting (W/A diffusers in place) and provide very even -- and strong -- light when all is said and done.

Here is a shot from the front. The light is broad, round and plenty even. I can easily work at modest portrait ranges outdoors in broad daylight, which is great.
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It is a little clunky, but hand-holdable nonetheless. Next improvements will be:

• Tripod mounts along both axes -- vertical and horizontal camera orientations.

• Spray paint it flat black, then acrylic to protect it.

• Rounded cap nuts on the protruding (1/4x20) bolts.

• Drop some money on a soft drum case to be able to take it on the road (airlines.)


Here's a photo of the business end, shot by Jeremy Reitman at the Patasco Meetup. I'll be the first to admit that this is a little, uh, gung-ho, compared to some of the earlier designs. But this thing rocks on the output and the even light, so I am one happy camper.

Oughtta have some pretty nice guns by summer if I use it enough, too...
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NEXT: Test Driving the DIY HD Ring Flash

Lighting 102: 5.1 -- Refract and Reflect

Okay, show of hands: How many people have been trying to do this Lighting 102 stuff with just one flash?

Don't feel so bad. Back in the day, lighting guru Dean Collins was only allowed to use one light source for his first year of studying his craft at school. And he did just fine, thank you.

Whether you have one light or twelve, the trick is making them look like more is knowing how to stretch them into doing double-, triple- and even quadruple-duty for you. Or you can just take that one light and give it some texture -- a little more interestingness.

By reflecting and refracting light, you can pimp it up like a college student making a gourmet meal out of ramen noodles and a few Taco Bell fire sauce packets. Hit the jump for more.
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For the most part, light from your flash starts out looking pretty yucky. We have learned how to move it around, soften it up and restrict it, but you can also bend it, or shoot it right back at itself.

In fact, before the light ever leaves your speedlight, it has already been refracted. The fresnel lens on the front of your strobe bends the rays to make them spread out wide or zoom in tight. But who's to say that you can't do a little more of that kind of stuff after the fact?


At left is a photo of photographer Ant Upton, who did this cool guest On Assignment of a soccer player in Paris a ways back. I shot him during a lighting seminar in London last year.

Before we lit it, the backdrop for this photo was an speckled grey room divider. A gelled flash took care of the drab color. But the subtle pattern was created by shooting our background flash through a water pitcher to bend the light around in a funky way.

This is the kind of thing that can turn a plain-jane background into something with a little texture to it. I do these lighting gigs in typical, boring hotel conference rooms, and I often have to scrounge for something to make the light a little more interesting. I have to go with what I have on hand, and frequently, that means a stack of water glasses or a pitcher.

In this instance, the trick is to back the flash up a little from the pitcher to make the light point-source enough to create a good pattern as it shoots through. (This also means you are probably gonna get a lot of spill around the pitcher, so I tend to snoot or grid the light to keep the beam tight.)

If you are looking for an even cooler thing to shoot light through, those (cheap) translucent, wavy-glass blocks at Home Depot look even nicer for a light bender. Use your imagination -- light modifiers are everywhere.
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Or, you can easily make one light do the work of two. For this quickie headshot-in-a-corner of actor Bruce Vilanch (in drag for a role in the musical "Hairspray," I stuck a speedlight into an umbrella and used one wall of the corner setting for a backdrop and the other wall as a reflector.

Bingo: One light becomes main and fill.

(Full how-to on the quickie corner headhot setup here.)

This is simple stuff, and you should always think of a neutral-colored wall as a second light source, waiting to help you fill those shadows.

But refracting light can make it more interesting, and reflecting light can multiply it into something that looks far more complex than it is.


For instance, you can shoot light through something translucent and use the resulting modulated shadow as a compositional element. A good example is this shot of a pair of glasses, by Ekistoflarex.

All it takes is a little imagination.
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But especially nifty, IMO, is what you can do with mirrors. And rather than throw an example up for this, I want you to take a moment to previsualize it. This way, you start to build a photo in your mind before you pull out the first (and sometimes only) light.

You want to get to where you can see the light in your mind before you ever start to create it. You want a process you can depend on, not a string of lucky accidents. (Although we'll certainly take lucky accidents when we can get them.)

Imagine a table-top product shot, lit with a single, bare light, say, from directly above. You'd obviously get that "suspect-getting-the-third-degree" kind of light. Which can be cool, depending on the reflective quality of the surface the object it is sitting on.

But say, for the sake of argument, that you happened to drop by Ikea or a home store and bought a pack of four mirror tiles for $5.99.

Now, say you placed two mirrors front camera left and right of the subject, and the other two back camera left and right, too. If you angled them properly, you would turn that one, top-spotlight into a full, five-sided wrap-light setup for just $5.99.

You seeing it?

In fact, you can do a lot of seemingly complex table-top photography with just one real light source, if you bounce that thing around some. That mirror-wrap thing is just an example. You might decide to build your lighting scheme on one (real) rim light with reflector cards and mirrors stretching it into a near-endless set of apparent light sources.

If you are into gelling your light, you could control the color of each of those mirrored light sources individually. You just have to remember that you'll get double the strength out of your gels, because the light gets gelled on the way in and on the way back out when reflecting from the mirror.

(It's an easy fix. You just use half of what you need -- a 1/2 CTO becomes a full CTO, etc.)

If $5.99 is beyond your disposable income limit this week, consider making some foil reflectors. Just a little cardboard covered with aluminum foil can do winders for a small product shot. Remember to crinkle the foil up, then spread it back out, for a nice, even reflector surface.

No assignment today -- just some thoughts to get your gears turning. Just a heads-up to be thinking about what you have -- or can scrounge or buy -- as a set of reflectors. Because our next assignment (which I'll be doing, too) will require that you use one light -- in several different directions at once.


NEXT: 5.2: Assignment | Double-Duty Light

Pentatonix' Daft Punk Video: Low Budget Meets Awesome Creativity

If you are one of the five people on the internet who have not yet seen the new video of Pentatonix covering Daft Punk this week, you're in for a treat.

And as cool as it is, dig a little deeper and it gets way better. This video is one percent budget and 99 percent pure talent and creativity — the latter of which will trump budget and scale every time.

Read more »

SLC-0E-05: Light Your Home Like a Photographer

Long-time readers of this site are already familiar with my family, having watched my kids grow up in photos. Seen above, on the left, is my daughter Emily. You guys met her when she was eight.

She's seventeen now, and headed off to college next year. Which meant this is the last time we'll put up a Christmas tree while we are all living here together.

I have always tried take lots of photos around the holiday season. And even more so, now that the kids will be graduating soon. And as we have successively remodeled many of the rooms in our house, I have made it a point to pay special attention to the lighting.

Why? Because you can get a lot of bang for your buck when it comes how a room looks just by thinking like a photographer during the remodel. And another bonus is that your quick available light grab shots will look much better, too. Even if you are just using your iPhone to shoot it.

Take the living room, for instance. Before remodel, it was lit mainly by a small, four-bulb fixture attached to a ceiling fan. You can probably imagine just how flattering this wasn't. And it was something that bugged me enough to lobby to get rid of the fan just so we could have more of a choice about our lighting.

In the end, I got the okay. And I have long been happy that we did it. Here's a quick run-through on the decision process for this room, in the hopes that it'll inspire you to think about how you can use your lighting skills to improve the quality of any room you might choose to remodel in the future.
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Here's a photo of the living room as it exists now. Mind you, this is purposely shot available light, not as an artificially lit room.

But here it is, exposed for the room rather than for the light sources, to give you a sense of how the lights are distributed.

First and most important is the drum lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling. Remember the four-banger bare-lamp light I mentioned earlier? That's long gone, and replaced by what is essentially a soft box pointing straight down. It's three feet across; a legit beauty light.

And the arrangement of the room around the light means that anyone sitting in the room is sitting under a quality light source, and at a good angle. The only harsh place to be around this light would be directly under it. And you can't go there. Because guess where we put the coffee table.

So if you are sitting on the sofa or the love seat or the chair, you look good. When you're in the room the effect is not unlike sitting in a lounge in a nice hotel, where they have taken the time to design the light for the effect that they want.

And standing or sitting, pretty much anywhere in the room, a snapshot of you is gonna be reasonably flattering at the very least. And that's true whether it was shot on a purpose-built camera or a smartphone. To wit, the example at top of the page.

Over at camera right are two wall lamps, which serve to fill the shadows of the overhead "key" light—or to become pretty nice rim lights for someone sitting on the couch. No major surgery here, as the lamps came with conduit assemblies to run the cords right down the wall. They're just plugged in behind the couch.

At back are two "can" lights in the ceiling, washing down on the fireplace. They just keep it from going super dark back there. (And of all of the lights, they are the only ones that are built-in, and pre-dated the remodel.)

Two other items of note. One, the lights are all on dimmers. This gives us tons of control of both the absolute level of light and the lighting ratios between the different planes. You really can accomplish a lot of looks with a few different planned-out light sources and some dimmers.

And two, all of the lights are LEDs. Which means that this entire room—seven bulbs—totals only about 36 watts of energy consumption. And that is if they are on full-blast, which they almost never are. I just nuked them up to buy myself some exposure here. We normally keep them pretty subtle and balanced. But that also would look bad in a photo because a light cannot easily serve as both subject matter and light source.

But dialed down, I would guess we are typically lighting the room with around ten watts of power, total. It's just well-distributed.
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Remodel Like a Photographer

When choosing lights for a room remodel, here are some things to think about.

• If you can spring for a big, soft main source, splurge. You won't regret it. This could mean a drum lamp (we had ours made here) or a light that bounces off the ceiling. In our case, the main light does both. Unseen (from almost exactly my camera position) is a smaller version that hangs down over our dining table. The two light their assigned spaces beautifully and tie the double room together visually.

• Think of task lights as doing double-duty. First, they accent a room. Second, they fill the main light. Oh, wait, make that three—they can also create mood by dimming them down and using them without the main.

• LED bulbs are getting better and better—they have passed CFL lights—and will save you tons of money over their lifespan. Good quality ones are as low as $5 at Home Depot (these are Philips, FYI.) The room shot above is a poor representation of the light color/quality. That's because the lights are serving as both light source and subject. If I chose one or the other (as in the top photo) they would look good. And to the eye they look great.

• Dimmers on each circuit and dimmable LED bulbs will give you lots of options to shape the room. Just make sure to use modern "triac" style dimmers (most all sold today are this type). Those work best with LED lights and also don't just waste energy through resistors when you dim down.

• In the overall cost scheme of remodeling a room, decent lighting design (and the forethought of a photographer's approach to lighting) is about the best value you can get for your dollar. I've done this with every single room we have remodeled, and have been really pleased with the results.



FROM: Strobist Lighting Cookbook

SLC-OE-01: $20 DIY Portable Doorway

Pictured above is Moishe Appelbaum, of Midwest Photo fame, whom you may remember from Lighting 103.

Moishe is lit with a single small flash. But the gentle wrap of the light—and the soft glow of the suppressed specular highlights—should cue you in to the fact that the light modifier itself is huge.

Today, we'll learn how to make a door-sized modifier DIY style, for about $20 and in a form factor that is super easy to transport. (It collapses down to about the size of a folded light stand.) Read more »

50 DIY Projects for Lighting Photographers

Do you have more time than money? Time to get your MacGuyver on with this collection of DIY projects. From the ridiculous to the sublime, it's all here. Most of these have been submitted by Strobist readers with more ingenuity than cash. That said, no matter how flush you are it is always better to save your cash for things you can't make yourself.

Links are coded to open in new tabs, for easier multi-project browsing. Pictured above: $10 DIY Macro Studio

Read more »

Check Out the RoundFlash Ring Flash Adapter

See this little bag? It's about six inches across, yet it contains a ~17", collapsible ring flash adapter.

Curious? I was too. So I ordered one and had it shipped over from Poland. Full test drive, inside.

Read more »

Begun, the Expensive Light Mod War has…

BronImaging has introduced a $489.00 bracket that will allow you to mount your Profoto head on a $2,317.00 Para 88 reflector.

Meanwhile, on a remote planet all the way back into your price range, a $10 Home Depot lamp globe will mount directly onto your Einstein and/or AlienBees flash, right out of the box…

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