PUBLIC MARKS with tags diy & light

You have probably seen the Bidon Lamp (“bidón” meaning “barrel” or “can” in Spanish) in photos and videos of the R3project. Here is how you can make your own.

I love unique lighting!  I did a little digging and found 10 amazing modern DIY lighting projects you can can tackle this weekend!

The Wood Lamp was originally designed as a limited edition for an installation for RH Chairs is now put into production by the Danish Company Muuto. The Wood Lamp is also part of the Danish Design Museum. The all-wood lamp is a lo-tech counterweight to the usually very modern and technical desk lamps. All details on the lamp are chosen through a pragmatic perspective and all bolts, screws and joints are emphasized. By using very simple methods we have been able to give Wood Lamp a very honest and iconic expression.

For anyone doing portrait work, the term “beauty dish” is bound to crop up sometime or another, whether it’s reading Strobist, looking at the technical notes from shoots, or simply surfing for more gear you don’t need. Over the last year, there’s been a lot of interest in DIY (do it yourself) beauty dishes, made of everything from plastic salad bowls to aluminum turkey roasting pans. With the annual slowdown of concert season this winter, I decided to undertake my own DIY project and set out to see what this beauty dish business was all about.

This is the area within SportsShooter.com where we stash all the things that don't quite fit the normal 'news story' template. Special picture galleries, movies, and other kinds of bandwith-consuming content that don't fit neatly inside our story templates can be found here.

The LED lights that come built-in to our cell phone cameras are generally useless. But not so the lights built into the cell phone screens themselves. I am pretty much married to my iPhone now. Well, maybe not technically, but we are sleeping together. I am a huge fan of the BBC podcasts: Global News, Business Daily, FOOC, etc., and listen as I fall asleep.

This is a DIY project I have had in mind for a while now. When I purchased my studio flash heads, they came with a couple of small softboxes. Although I prefer to use translucent umbrellas whenever I can (small, light, easy to transport), there are times when a softbox is a better solution. While I could use the studio head softboxes in some circumstances with my small strobes, there was no way of effectively holding the flash in place without a lot of jerry rigging. To this end, I wanted to design a softbox that would be light, reasonably strong and durable, adaptable (double diffuser, grid attachment, barn doors etc.) at a later date and have a quick and easy way to mount the flash.

I always keep my eye on the strobist flickr pool. It is one of the best places to get your lighting ideas. The other day, I saw a cool Corona shot there made by Nick Wheeler. Nick was so kind to share his lighting technique with DIYP readers. So, the following article is a guest post by Nick Wheeler, If you like this tutorial as much as I did stop by Nick's flickr stream and say "Hi" (You'll also get a nice dose of fine images).

After taking some shots with the Floor Lit Table Top Studio by Nick, It's time to take it up a notch. The previous article showed how to take great liquid product shots, though the set up can work for both liquids and solids. In this part of the tutorial Nick will show a modification of the setup that allows you to add some color effects to the shot. If you like it, stop by Nick's flickr stream and say "Hi". In addition to showing your appreciation, you'll get some great studio images and setup shots. Now for todays exiting twist: By cutting a flap in the back side of the box you can get a whole new dimension to the pictures you can take.

These videos cover portrait photography and studio lighting techniques using simple equipment. You’ll also find an introduction to bird photography and a video on building a pinhole camera.

Make your own cheap IKEA softbox (9 1/2" diameter) - set of round white nylon IKEA NÖJE storage baskets (3 for $4.99

Having seen a lot of ring flash pictures popping up all over Flickr just recently, I decided to have a go at making one myself. I had a look through a couple of dozen designs for doing this and they all seemed to have one thing in common, they were all based on a ring. Nothing wrong with that of course, it is a ‘ring’ flash when all said and done, but after thinking about the problem for a while I decided to follow the advice of Huey Lewis, after all, it is ‘hip to be square’.

Home made beauty dish with a stainless steel wok cover. DIY 24x36 softbox Home made round diffuser Extended Canon Off Shoe Cord II Snoot and color filter for Speedlites

Do you know why they call this piece of studio equipment "Beauty Dish"? Because it make people look beautiful. The idea is similar to other diffusion ideas - the more diffusion you put in your light, the softer the image is. This idea is widely deployed in photography studios - the softbox, the beauty dishes and the reflector disc all work on close principles.

This website is about one thing: Teaching you how to use your small flashes, off camera, to get professional results. Your flash photography will never be the same again.