Get the U.S. Post Office to deliver softer light from your flash unit

    In our last post, we talked about using a modifier to bounce your flash and soften its light.

    If you're using your flash in an off-camera studio setup, you might want to use something a bit more heavy duty to soften that light from the flash.

    A flash is what's known as a "hard" light. It's a bright, small, directional light source that can produce a harsh light and crisp shadows, even if you use it off the camera.

    A softbox increases the size of the light source, which softens the light, especially when combined with a diffuser in the front. It creates a more pleasing effect, especially when you're doing portrait work.

    There are commercial options for speedlight-sized softboxes, but they start at about $17, and go up from there.

    But for the same price, you could make several soft boxes, varying the sizes based on the size of your flash and how much diffusion you want.

    This particular design is made from duct tape, aluminum foil, either wax paper or cooking parchment, and a post office shipping box.

    While this softbox is not collapsible, it is more for either in studio or if you're taking it to a staged location shot.

    While any cardboard will do to make the box, I chose to use a priority mail box for my build, inspired by my maker son who uses those boxes to make carrying cases for books. I found it's a good material for this type of project:

• It is a more sturdy cardboard than you find with some other boxes.
• The boxes are free at the post office. (You only pay when you actually ship something in it.)

    I figured out the size I wanted for the diffuser at the end, and then measured out on the cardboard from that width, angling the size lines down to the aperture where the flash unit goes, and cut the pieces.

 

 

    The next step is to put a reflective material on the inside part of the box, to increase the flash's power, especially since the light is going to be diffused. You can paint it white, but I chose to use aluminum foil, shiny side out. I used a glue stick to attack the foil, but I think in future builds I might go with a spray adhesive.

    I found that duct tape was the best way to join the sides together. I used black to give it a more finished look. For the diffuser panel, I used wax paper, but I also did a later one with cooking parchment, which has a greater diffusion but costs you one stop in light.

 

    It just slips over the front of the flash, and at this size works best when the flash is mounted on either a light stand or  a tripod, although you can scale it down to fit on a camera-mounted flash.

    So, what do the pictures look like? I thought you'd never ask.

    First, here's without the box.

    As you can see, the light appears harsh, and the shadow has a crisp appearance.

    Now, with the first box I built, which is about a 10x10.

    You can see the softening in the shadows, where there's now an actual penumbra rather than a hard edge.

    Here's a smaller version I made.

    This one didn't soften the light as much, as it was a smaller box, but it's also about 2 meters from the subject.

    Finally, I made a larger, shallower box, and used parchment instead of wax paper.

    This one produced a softer light, but I also had to increase the flash power by one stop to get the proper exposure with the parchment.

DIY rig allows for bounced flash even when there's no ceiling to aim it.

    One of the easier ways to improve your flash photography is to bounce it off the ceiling or a wall.

    As long as the surface is white, or close to white as possible, it will soften the light and give a more pleasing appearance to the subject.

    There are just a couple problems with it, though.

    First, just bouncing off the ceiling by itself will cause shadows around the eyes and under the nose. That's because the light is only coming from above. Years ago, I got around that problem with a double-headed flash, where a smaller flash filled in the shadow areas, creating a great even light.

    Second, you need a ceiling, or at least one that's not too far away. Trying to bounce a flash off the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral or indoor stadium is not going to work as well as a standard-height ceiling.

    The solution to the problem is to use a bounce card that gives the flash something to bounce off, both filling in the shadows and allowing for a softer light in places where a ceiling bounce is clearly not practical.

    Most speedlights today are equipped to a small plastic card you can slide out that reflects some light forward while the main flash bounces off the ceiling, balancing the light. But that does not quite address the problem if you're shooting outdoors.

    There's a variety of flash modifiers out there that will allow you to bounce the flash forward, creating a softer light than a direct flash while avoiding the shadows from just an overhead lighting.

    The one I use is one I found on Pieroway.com. Unfortunately, the site has since been suspended, but fortunately it is still available on Archive.org's Wayback Machine. The site has PDFs that you can print out with the pattern for the bounce card, with the option to print one with a plain black back or one with the logos for Canon, Nikon or Sony.

    One of the things I like with this design is that it goes over the face of the flash, giving the light something to bounce off of. Other cards allow the flash to go straight out to the ceiling, which is fine if you have a ceiling nearby.

    While the site recommends printing it on card stock and making the necessary folds, I found that using two sheets of craft foam — one black and one white — works better, as it's more durable, the black layer prevents light spillage and it can be folded if you score the fold lines with an X-Acto knife.

    The site recommends attaching it with a rubber band, which I did when I used a cardstock version as a proof of concept. For the final, I used Velcro fasteners to attach to the flash unit.

    Here's what it looks like on my flash:

    But how does it work?

    Here's a photo with the flash directly on the subject, in this case a plush Opus from "Bloom County." (The following pictures only have lens corrections, color balance and sharpening applied.)

    Bouncing off ceiling.

    The flash's built-in flash card.

    The Pieroway modifier.

    What do you think?

Feeling the need for speed? Try slowing down

    You're taking a photo of something that's moving, and you want to convey a sense of speed, even if the subject isn't moving quickly.

    The quickest and best way to do this is to slow down your shutter speed, which will cause the moving subject to blur in its line of motion and create the illusion that it is moving quickly even if it's moving relatively slowly.

    In this picture taken near the Northern Pacific Railway Museum in Toppenish, Wash., I got a freight train going past the old depot that houses the museum. At this point, the train is passing through town and just went over a rail crossing, so it's only going about 25 mph. Not terribly fast.

    But I set my ISO to 100 and stopped down to f-29, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/5 of a second. That caused the train to blur significantly as it went down the rails, while the depot and lamp post remain clear, helping further sell the concept.

    (In case you're wondering, I actually hand-held this photo as it was a relatively spur-of-the-moment shot. Since I don't drink coffee, my hands are fairly steady. But a tripod would not hurt, especially if you want to use even slower shutter speeds.)

DIY fluorescent LED bulbs provide customizable lighting alternatives for photos, video

    Along with clamp lights, another option for continuous lighting are LED fluorescent tubes.

    Adam from Droi Media did a couple video tutorials in 2019 showing how to make your own light tubes, as well as a mount and dimmer for them. He estimates the costs for the lights at less than $25 a foot.

    Many of you are probably thinking that sounds pretty stiff since you can get a 4-foot LED fluorescent tube for about $63 at a warehouse hardware store. And you'd be right, except for two things: 1. That's just the tube and not the mount or the way to power the light; and 2. You have to buy a 4-foot light.

    Adam's plan allows you to customize the size of the light to fit your cases, and they don't require all the other major hardware you need to power them.

    Basically his design involves wrapping LED strip lights around a wooden dowel, attaching wires for the power supply and inserting it in a frosted tube secured by screws through the end caps and hooked up to a power supply. The hardest skill in the whole thing appears to be soldering wire.

    He also shows how to combine them on a mount with a dimmer switch. It's a great addition for your video or studio photography kit, and being LED, which can also run off batteries, used in the field as well.

PVC lightstands can support flash units with DIY adapter

    As promised, here's how to mount a flash unit on your PVC light stand.

    Everybody is familiar with flash units, especially on-camera flash. Some people started out with the built-in flash, but the first major upgrade is going with a speed light on the hot shoe.

    But if you want to take your flash photography to the next level, you need to get the flash off the camera, allowing you to get better lighting angles than if it's attached to the top of your camera, or on a bracket to the side.

    We won't get into how to trigger the flash, as the DIY options involve some knowledge of electronics and there are options available such as wireless transmitters or using our camera's on-board flash as a "master" to trigger the "subordinate" flashes.

    But the question is how to set the flash up away from the camera. Most speed lights nowadays come with a small cold-shoe base you can attach to the bottom of the flash. This base lets you set it on a table or shelf, but that doesn't help much when there's nothing to sit it on.

    The flash makers recognize that, and these feet have a 1/4x20 hole in the bottom to attach it to a tripod. That's a good alternative, but suppose you need the tripod for a camera, or you don't have the room to set up one or more tripods (they do take up quite a bit of real estate)?

    PVC light stands, particularly the one I built based on Scott Eggelston's (The Frugal Filmmaker) plan, take up one square foot of floor space.

    Using Scott's plan for hacking a worklight, I got a set of four 3/4" PVC end caps to make four flash mounts. While Scott just put a bolt through the cap to attach to the work light, a flash is different, since it would also need to swivel and tilt.

    I found a set of fairly heavy duty ball heads on eBay (I had asked Scott if a ball head he had used in a different project would work for a speed light, but he told me to get something with a greater weight rating.) that could hold a DSLR with lens if needed.

    I attached the head to 1/4x20 bolt through the cap, giving me a mount that can slip over the 3/4" pipe on the lightstand.

    The ball head is fully adjustable and the flash stand attaches easily and securely to it.