I finally hunkered down and spent the couple of minutes it took to make a DIY Cereal Box Snoot ala Strobist.com.
It’s fastened snugly to my Nikon SB-28 using good old fashioned friction. You can clearly see the PocketWizard fastened to the swivel mount via Velcro strip so it doesn’t bounce around whilst in transit.
By the way, this little portable light setup has served me extremely well since I’ve put it together. I’ve had it fall to the ground from tall heights (minus snoot, plus umbrella) on several occasions and it has yet to explode on me. I even bent my Photoflex adjustable umbrella and squeezed it right back to perfection. What’s cool is I actually seem to be getting better at this whole “lighting” thing. :)
Getting back to the subject, I tested out my new toy tool by firing it at the kitchen drapes hanging defenseless against the onslaught of homemade snooty goodness.
At a distance of five feet, the 6″ snoot struck a beam of focused light that created a flashy sweet spot of about 2.5′ across and around 1′ in height. I walked around the house and took snooted strobe shots of whatever I could find. Even did a few texture shots against an open pamphlet in the kitchen.
Then I bothered my dad in the living room for a few minutes while I tried out a few different things. I learned something new over the holidays this week. If you remove your lens from its camera mount and hand hold it a bit away from the camera, you can do some serious damage to the lens’ perception of depth of field.
I ‘ve been doing the poor man’s tilt shift lens thing since I learned it [cough, yesterday] and decided to apply it to the use of my newly snootified flash. Thanks to Zack Arias for the “ghetto tilt shift” idea. I decided to make a statement with my picture; something to the effect of my dad spends way too much time on the computer.
And here I am writing a very descriptive blog, with illustrations, in the middle of the night. Like father like son, I suppose.
When I was done, I went to my room and tried my hand at some self portraiture using my new found knowledge. The culmination of which resulted in what I think is a photograph I’m going to be proud of for a really long time.
You can check out the images in a larger form at Flickr by clicking on them. However, I think my self portrait looks best on black.
Thanks to David Hobby and Zack Arias for graciously spilling their knowledge onto unsuspecting amateur photogs like myself. Y’all da bomb!
Cheers.
One Response to “Homemade Snooty Goodness”
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June 22nd, 2007 at 4:05 am
Fantastic! I’d only found out about this a couple of hours ago so seeing your results is quite inspiring! I especially enjoy the DIY cerealboxiness of it!
Cheers mate!