I’ve been doing a fair amount of landscape stuff lately, which means I spend a fair amount of time out in the sun. After my last outing with Tiho and our hike to the Staunton River Bridge I resolved to find a good hat.
I believe I have found it. It’s made by Tula and is their “Lifeguard” Model. You can find them online easy enough. I bought mine from an outfit called NRS.
And, no, I’m not Amish.
I’m still planning another post on the Softlighter, but I’ve got to find one more cable before I can get back to that. My intent when I got that modifier was to use my Vivitar 285HV’s in tandem. The only problem is, my triggers use 2.5mm plugs instead of the more normal 3.5mm plugs. Oh… and mono instead of stereo (which makes a difference, believe me). I thought for sure I had another 3.5mm to PC pig tail, but I can’t find it. I’ll order another and get the splitter situation resolved, and I’ll let you know what I think. The real point of this post is to mention a couple of things I picked up recently.
A couple weeks ago I decided that my tripod’s ball head just wasn’t cutting it.
It’s a knockoff I got from Amvona a couple years ago, and it’s served me well, but seeing the ease that Tiho takes to compose a shot in his camera thanks to his grip head showed me that grip heads, when the gear allows for it, is certainly the way to go. I had also noticed the original ball head had gotten sloppy in it’s rotational axis. Once the new grip arrived I took the ball head apart and discovered that it was missing some screws. I found replacements in my computer screw can, and now the ball head is semi-permanently attached to my monopod. Other than a loose screw that presented during our outing on Friday, the grip head is everything I expected it to be. And the price was definitely right: $52 delivered on eBay.
The other thing new toy was a bit of a surprise. Friday Tiho and I came across a small flea market on the way out of town so we stopped thinking we might find some props for still life shots. What I found instead was a hardshell golf bag carrier made by SKB.
Guess what I paid? $10. Obviously (or not so), I’m not using it for golf gear… it’s nearly perfect for light gear though. Right now it holds two big light stands, five umbrellas, a complete backdrop support system, and a few other random things. It’s nearly the perfect solution. Never mind that it looks awesome too.
I spent a bit of time this morning looking for softboxes for speedlights and I’m flat out amazed at how much people are willing to spend on these things. There’s really not much at all to a softbox… a lightweight shell with a reflective surface and a diffuser of some sort to soften the light. The materials themselves are hardly expensive, and the engineering can’t be the justification either. Even for the budget-minded products, my guess is that it’s simply a case of charging what the market will bear.
I’ve had the idea before of putting a diffuser over a reflective umbrella. Really, all it’d take is a piece of ripstop nylon, some grommets, maybe a length of bungee to cinch things up… I’ve just never taken the time to do it. And since I’m a little behind the eight ball (does this surprise you?), I ordered an SL-5000 today from B&H so that I can have it in time for a shoot next weekend. Not having a working sewing machine, nor time to do the R&D, the $60 price tag seemed about as good as I was going to get for something larger than the 20″ $40 specials on eBay. Plus, with an actual product in front of me, I figure it’ll be easy enough to reverse engineer the diffusion panel to make my own down the road and save a few bucks.
I’m expecting I’ll need to figure out a mount for the speedlight, but that won’t be a problem. I’ve seen a few methods in my searching this morning, and I’m a resourceful enough guy that I’m sure I can come up with an elegant solution.
Stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted.
For quite some time I’ve been wanting a mechanism to support a laptop in my truck. I’ve had a few different concepts in mind, from a wedge of foam to fill the passenger seat to various other not-so-great ideas. A week or two ago I saw a setup that intrigued me so I figured it was about time to get off my butt and do something.
First of all, why? Well, the biggest reason is that I want a comfortable workspace for reviewing photographs in the field. Too often when I’m in a new situation I’m learning on the spot and I don’t really know what’s successful beyond the basic exposure information I can get from a histogram. Things like blown highlights, or soft focus & depth of field issues… I’d like to know right away what works and doesn’t and despite the size of the preview screen on my 50D, I just can’t tell if I’ve blown the focus until I see full size images when I get home. Yeah, I’ve always had my laptop and it would be easy enough to setup on the hood of my truck, but this is better.
Mike’s design is more basic than mine and mounts to the cup holder in his center console. So, Monday I tried that, but just couldn’t make it work. Nothing fit tight enough for my taste. Out of frustration I stuffed the original PVC components under the center armrest and was struck by a bit of inspiration. After a little more brainstorming I ran back up to Lowe’s and picked up a few more fittings, and threw together the basic layout you see here (sans wood).
I called in the cavalry Tuesday night and took a ride to David’s house where we knocked out the wood and final assembly in about two hours.
Features:
I still have a bit of finish work to do. I need to paint the wood (stain & polyurethane is an option too), add a nonskid foam pad, and a ledge of some sort for the front edge of the laptop surface. I’m thinking a very sleek low profile drawer pull might do the trick. I also want to add a Velcro strap to go across the laptop to hold it in place.
I’d do a full write up, but for this to work as well for you as it does for me you’d have to have the same seat package as my truck. Still, I think the concepts and basic ideas here might be useful to others. Feel free to post questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.
UPDATED 2009.07.18 – I’ve finished up the mount and added a few more pictures of he finished unit. I’ll actually have an opportunity to use it tonight during a night time shoot downtown with the RPMG. I used a polyurethane/stain blend on all the wood and decided to finally just glue up all the pieces so it was solid. I opted to use a couple of bolts to hold the tee and 90 to the two mounting flanges instead of glue so I wouldn’t waste the two flanges should any changes need to be made. Everything else is glued except for the connection between the laptop surface flange and the rest of the unit. This way I can pop the laptop surface off (with or without the laptop installed) and stow it in the back seat (see the last photo in the gallery). I had considered painting the PVC, but I’d rather have white, than some other color that’s prone to scratching. I might do a test with the Krylon Fusion paint to see how well it bonds to PVC. If it works well I might reconsider and paint it after all. But for now, I’m considering the project finished.
As you can see, the screen sits up really high and would obstruct the driver’s view if you tried to use this while driving. I’m pretty sure you’d get pulled over and ticketed if you tried, so don’t be dumb. For the record, I’m not responsible if you do something stupid.
I’m pleased with the final result and I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces tonight and tomorrow.
***UPDATE*** Photos of the semi-finished rig are in my Flickr Stream. Full write up to come (eventually).
I know I’ve been promising a more detailed write up of my shooting table, but that’ll just have to wait. Currently I’m neck deep in designing a PVC Ring Light. Here’s the design so far…
I’ll be using 1-1/4″ Pipe & Fittings with one length of 1″ pipe to act as a bushing in the mounting sleeve. The reason for using 1-1/4″ material is that the light sockets I found at Home Depot (rubber, weatherproof, 2-wire in the electrical section) fit perfectly into the socket of a 1-1/4″ tee. I’m going to wire it so that it takes two switches… each switch will control 4 bulbs. The mounting bits on the side will allow the whole rig to be flipped over and mounted for right or left-handed use.
The OD of the rig will be about 35″ with 25″ worth of space to shoot through.
The tentative parts list is as follows:
3 ea Cross, 1-1/4″ Sch 40 PVC
3 ea 90 Ell, 1-1/4″ Sch 40 PVC
8 ea Tee, 1-1/4″ Sch 40 PVC
8 ea 45 Ell, 1-1/4″ Sch 40 PVC
8 ea Light Socket (I’ll post the part number once I buy them)
1 ea Two-Switch Light Switch
1 ea 1-1/4″ Sch 40 PVC Pipe (a 5ft piece would probably be more than enough)
1 ea 1″ Sch 40 PVC Pipe (30″ or so)
1 ea Switch box
1 ea Extension cord
Some Romex wire
Crimpable Wire nuts
Right now I’m still spec-ing out the bulbs… I’ll be using daylight balanced CFL’s, but I’m having a hard time finding some with everything I want… 40 to 60 watts in the 5500K to 6500K range with a CRI over 90. If you know of anything that fits the bill leave a note.
I still need to talk to my brother the electrician about the wiring. I’ll post gauge recommendations and a wiring diagram once I have them figured out.
So far that’s what I’ve got… I need to get access to a band saw before proceeding due to all the cuts that have to be made. As soon as I have somethign to show I’ll post pictures.
Holy mackeral… this is a beautiful DIY project from a guy named Joe Holst. I’ve been thinking about a light like this for a long time (I even have a ring cut and waiting under the house), but this trumps anything I’ve ever imagined.
One of the problems with DIY gear is that—unless it’s done right—it can make you look bad. You’ll have none of those worries if you roll up with a rig like this.
Whenever I finally get around to doing this for real, these are the instructions I’ll be following.
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