Photography

Do it yourself Speedlite grid spot

2 Comments

As a group, photographers a.k.a artists who can’t draw can have obsessive personalities.

Just look at their gear.

They’re constantly tweaking something.

So it’s no surprise once they ‘graduate’ to lighting, they want to shape their lights with modifiers.

Thankfully, many are very generous in sharing their ideas online.

When I built my beauty dish, it wasn’t an original idea.

Who knows now who came up with it in the 1st place.

“Borrowing” from one person is plagiarism?

“Borrowing” from a bunch of people (online)? …Research!

Making Your Own Grid Spot

Do-It-Yourself Snoot or Gird---This is what I used: black plastic drinking straws, double-sided tape and a white rain gutter. The scissor? I used that to cut the straws into roughly 2-cm length pieces. piece.

If you aren’t the do-it-yourself type, you can purchase one for $30 but you may need to get some velcro to attach those to your Speedlite.

The one I made hardly cost $5.

I used the following:

  1. a rain gutter part
  2. double sided scotch tape
  3. a handful of black plastic drinking straws

The observant reader might recognize the rain gutter piece is the same one I used to attach my Speedlite to the beauty dish I made.

Procedure

Line the inside with double-sided tape first, then attach your cut pieces. You may have to use a 'tool' to position. I used an uncut straw so you can see. Had I used my fingers, the camera view would be obstructed. Doing this picture on self-timer is tricky.
The Grid Spot in progress. It may take a little patience putting one small piece of the straw at a time and attaching it with double-sided tape.

My ‘research’ told me I had to construct a honeycomb pattern with black material, so black plastic straws was the easy answer.

One straw can be cut into 10 or 11 2-cm pieces, so a handful (depending on the size of your hand) is more than enough.

One website suggested using UHU superglue.

I found double-sided tape to be a easier and a lot less messier.

Start by lining the narrower end of the interior of the rain gutter piece with double-sided tape.

Then grab your scissors and cut the plastic straws into 2-cm pieces.

When you have enough to start, you can begin attaching the small straw pieces the inside the narrower end of the white rain gutter piece.

With each layer you complete, put another piece of double-sided tape over the previous layer.

As your wall of straw pieces start to fill the inside of the rain gutter part, you will have less and less room to work.

If you have larger fingers, that might happen sooner 🙂

Eventually you will have to cut double-sided tape into small strips and attach those to one-small-straw-piece-at-a-time until the entire inside is filled.

Next: Some tests.

Peter Phun Photography

Promote Your Page Too


2 thoughts on “Do it yourself Speedlite grid spot”

  1. Hi Shane,
    It’s always great to hear from you. I’m so pleased to learn you built yourself a beauty dish, but more importantly, you use it and you like the results.

    This grid spot works well too for what little it cost to put together.

    I’ve been toying with the ‘look’ of the blog as you can see. I added a way to rate the posts.

    The feedback is useful to give me an idea of what visitors are interested in. Many don’t take the time to comment so by rating, it’s an easy way to tell me if I am way off.

  2. Hey Peter,

    I am a die hard do-it-yourself-er and found this to be an outstanding project. Yes I will try it. I made the plastic bowl beauty dish and it works great.

    It’s been awhile since I have had time to stop by and I like what you have done with the place!

    Your southern friend,
    Shane

Comments are closed.