Me.

The above shot was from playing around with a white shoot-through umbrella. I’ve read a little bit about using them but decided to wing it. I shot it tethered to my laptop and used my mouse as a shutter trigger. Software is called DSLR Remote Pro.

It’s been a little while since I’ve taken any photos, Rampfest has been a boiler lately and as I haven’t rolled for awhile the camera’s had a rest. I had some new bits and pieces come from MidWest Photo Exchange (MPEX) in the USA too.

2x Westcott 43″ collapsible white umbrella with cover
2x Lumopro LP653 Super clamps
2x Lumopro LP633 umbrella swivels

Really happy with the Lumopro gear. For my photography hobby I think it’s great to start off with without having to shell out for expensive Manfrotto gear. They’re almost exactly the same but made in China and about 1/2 to 1/3 the price.  Definitely worth looking into, exclusive to MPEX. I also have their LP604 light stands too, and they’re awesome.

I must say, compared to the D.I.Y Clamps I made up earlier, the Super-clamps are great. Have tons of grip and with the umbrella swivel you can point the thing everywhere. The D.I.Y’s still come in useful though for other things, and when I need to whack a flash on something large.

Strobist had posted up this little beauty of an idea for sticking strobes on things with minimal cost. Literally this was like under $3 US. Living in Australia, it’s a little harder to come by cheap bits and pieces.. I don’t think I’ve seen any of those metal clamps for 99c here, also those spigots are over $10 on their own down here.

I’m a big fan of DIY. Especially when it comes to anything photography. I decided to see if I could make my own flash clamp. My criteria? Cheap (Under $10… gotta start somewhere) and simple with no special bits to it. Living in Australia, Bunnings is probably the most widely known home hardware store – So that’s where I plan to get my parts from.

The spigots that are typically used have either a 1/4 thread (same as what is on the bottom of your camera) or a 3/8 thread (the larger one on the top of most light stands, etc) – I didn’t need to screw anything on to the clamp so I didn’t bother getting these thread sizes. If you want to screw on a compact camera or something to your clamp you may want to consider thread size when you purchase your bolts.

Here’s what I found to make my DIY flash clamp.

$4.98 – M8x35mm Nuts and bolts pack (Fittings isle)
M8 is the threadsize, 35mm is the lenngth. Doesn’t need to be high tensile – they just didn’t have the length I wanted the normal cheaper pack

$3.64 – Sonata 200mm nylon spring clamp (Tools section)
It has a relatively good grip (enough for a small flash) and has some teeth on the clamps for extra bite plus adjustable pads at the end of the clamps. Made of plastic which is easy to drill/dremel. A bit bigger than the commonly used metal spring clamps

Total: $8.62 – That’s cheap enough for me. Cheaper still if you just go to a nuts/bolts place and buy them separately.

I made a hole in the center of one of the clamp side arms. Pushed a bolt through it, and then screwed down the 4 nuts in the pack. This was my DIY soultion to those brass spigots that are hard to obtain down here in Australia. The umbrella swivel will just screw onto them, plus theres enough rotation in the flash head/umbrella swivel to negate having a round barrel to lock onto. (The nut only has 6 flat sides which the umbrella swivel will lock onto securely)

So how does it work? Pretty damn good for under something that took 5 minutes to make for under $10.

Something you could do, if you wanted to be totally paranoid about the nuts coming loose over time – Buy some threadlocker. Its in the same isle as the nuts and bolts and its called Loctite. Put a few drops of this on the thread of the bolt and screw the nuts down..They wont move after that.

This is just how I did it, feel free to change whatever you want to suit yourself. Let me know if you found this little tip handy though, I’d appreciate it!

The umbrella stand I used comes with a silver umbrella and is from from DealExtreme for $15 bucks shipped.

The 430EX from Canon does not have a sync port, and why spend $20 bucks on a hot-shoe adapter when you can cheaply add your own (if you have the tools/skills required already) .. and by cheaply I mean it cost me $1 for a jack..which is all I needed.

I did some research trying to see if anyone had fit a 3.5mm sync port jack internally into a 430EX base – Could only find this one by Michael Bass. Looks like a pretty tight squeeze using a fancy metal plug. I found these but if you plugged in cable, they would probably foul on something because of the angle you would need to install it, so decided to go with an external plug instead. The pain in the ass with the 430EX is that there is barely any room to do anything in the base plate, unlike it’s bigger brothers.

I already had the tools and bits to do the job, only thing I had to buy was this 3.5mm mono socket from Dick Smith.

Was a pretty easy task, First thing (Obviously) is to take the base plate off by removing the 4x phillips head screws. Once off,  I used a small flathead screwdriver to twist a hole through where one of the screws were (didn’t want to drill a new hole through the side..its a bit neater this way). The plastics pretty easy to get through without using a drill.

With the 3.5mm mono socket, I threw away the plastic outer cover and used a few different sizes of heatshrink to make it smaller.

All soldered up, tested and everything working.

Put everything back together, use a bit of bluetack (Tried using a gluegun but that stuff doesn’t stick to the heatshrink) and stuck it to the side. Holds well, while being easily removable if you want a better hold on the plug to connect a cable. Here’s the end result:

I’ve got some CyberSync’s on the way from the US (off-camera flash triggers built by this guy) which I’m keen to put to the test. Cheaper than PocketWizards but not nasty like the cheap china triggers I also have.

I’ll have to modify my Canon 430EX as it doesn’t have a sync port (and I don’t want to use a hot-shoe adapter) – I’ll chuck up a small article on that as well when I get around to it.

In the meantime, I’m hunting around for another Nikon SB-26 strobe.