Recently I’ve really been getting into the Strobist blog; it has a lot of great information on lighting. I highly recommend everyone checking it out sometime. Anyway, as I was reading through the Lighting 102 section of Strobist I really liked the section on restricing light, I decided I wanted to make some of my own Grid Spots to experiment with. It seems like it should be pretty simple, just need to get pointed in the right direction. After a quick Google search (I love Google) I came across this tutorial on a DIY Black Straw Snoot Grid. It was exactly what I was looking for. Time to get crafty!
The biggest problem for me was where the hell do I find black straws? They are definately not the most common type of drinking straws to be found. After asking a few friends I was led to Panera Bread, and, sure enough, there were my black drinking straws. After grabbing a few handfuls of those I was ready to go! I pretty much followed the tutorial above and ended up with 2 pretty good Grid Spots for my Nikon SB-24. You can see pictures of my craftsmanship below.
This was after the first row was glued down. You can see all of the little straw pieces in the background. Probably the most tedious part was cutting up all of those straws. I also decided after this one to not use Elmer’s glue anymore, leaves too much white residue. I used some clear spray glue for the second one.
This was after I had finally gotten the height right, just time to fill in all the missing straws on the sides. Almost done…
And the finished Grid Spot. This one was about 2cm or 3/4 of an inch in length. It produces a fairly focused beam of light. You can see some test shots of it below. I also made a 5cm (about 2 inches) one for an extremely small, focused beam.
And now for a few test shots of the finished product in action. The first 2 show off the beams on the wall, and the last picture is just a quick test shot I did on myself with the 5cm Grid Spot.
(Nikon SB-24 @ 1/8 power. ~6-8 feet from wall, 24mm zoom. 2cm homemade grid box)
(Nikon SB-24 @ 1/8 power. ~6-8 feet from wall, 24mm zoom. 5cm homemade grid box)
(and a quick test shot of me, just to see how it looks)
Not too bad for a few hours of arts and crafts and almost no cost to me. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try these out soon. I have a few ideas I’d like to try…just need to get some people to practice on. Any volunteers?