DIY snoot delivers light to right where it's needed

    Electronic flashes are easily one of the great innovations in photography, making it easier to get indoor photos.

    But when you're ready to get past the harsh light coming from either on top of the camera or alongside it, there are a variety of ways to modify the light, either commercially or homemade, and go for a more artistic look.

    In previous posts, we've talked about softboxes and reflectors take the edge off the flash's harsh light, and an adapter for macrophotography.

    Today's installment deals with snoots, which turn the flash into a spotlight, putting a small relatively tight spot of light on a subject.

    While a grid, which we talked about building earlier, may seem to do the same thing, there's a difference. The grid's honeycomb pattern not only directs the light into a tighter area, it also feathers the edges so it's not so harsh.

    A snoot instead throws a sharply defined beam of light at its target. This can be good for creating a hairlight to separate your subject from a background or to create a shaft of light effect.

    My DIY snoot consists of postal box cardboard formed around the flash head, creating a tube that funnels the light forward. While some have used Pringles potato chip cans for this purpose, I found it was too narrow to put my flash head in straight on, and the bouncing in the macro tube was not effective for long distance.

        Now, to see how it works

    First, a photo with the unmodified flash, to serve as the baseline.

    With our DIY grid. See how it's a narrower beam but just fades off on the edges.

    The snoot produces a tight, harsh light. If you wanted to create the look of a shaft of light, this would be an effective tool for the job.

Work flashlight can aid aiming speedlights in studio settings

     When you start using off-camera flashes, usually the first lights you're going to use are your speed lights.

    One drawback with they have, compared to their larger, brighter studio cousins, is the lack of a modeling light.

    A modeling light is a small lamp, incandescent or now, LED, that shows the photographer where the light from the flash will fall, especially if it's used with a modifier. You likely saw these if you ever went to a photo studio for a portrait, or when you had photos taken at school; it's that glow you see coming from the umbrellas or softboxes before the picture's taken.

    Modeling lights are helpful if you're trying to set up a Rembrandt lighting (that's when one side of the face is illuminated more than the other side, but you have that triangle of light on the cheek on the darker side), or trying to adjust a rim light.

    You can still work without a modeling light, but that can involve quite a bit of trial and error, which might not go over well with some subjects who might question your competence behind the camera.

    But there is a way to at least get a similar effect and get your lighting within the ballpark, and just require a little bit of fine-tuning.

    Remember the flashlights I mentioned earlier as a night-photography light? You can use that as a makeshift modeling light.

    And it will only set you back 99 cents at Harbor Freight, unless you catch one of their free giveaways.

    For this to work, you make sure the main light is on, and center it over your flash head, or the center of your softbox. This will show you where the light is generally falling, and you can adjust the light's position as needed.

    It won't be as WYSIWYG* as a modeling light, but it will give you the general idea of where your light is going to go, and that should mean fewer adjustments when you start shooting.

    

    *What you see is what you get. It's a term first coined when word processors began to show you how your document would actually look with the chosen fonts and text styles.