Made a beauty dish! Inspired by the guys over at IShootShows’s – The Best DIY Beauty Dish

47cm Mixing Bowl = $12
8cm Aluminium Pizza Tray = $7
From London and American Supplies in Elizabeth St, Melbourne

Nuts, Bolts, Spraypaint = $20
Dremel cutting wheel kit = $30
From Bunnings Warehouse – All across australia

Speedlight adapter = $30
From eBay!

Some photos that I’ve shot with this thing:

Put together another short video.

Still haven’t painted it, have put speaker grilles on and also put in some LED lights for the top marquee and moves section. These give a nice ambient light if you want to play in the dark at the moment.

Used some Contact for the front of the CP, just to stop sweat and crap soaking into the bare MDF. Contact is the stuff you used to use in school to cover your books and stuff with.

Planning to try vinyl wrap to cover the cab..have to do some testing first and see how it goes. Here’s some updated photos.

Sarah bought me a 24″ Vewlix clone arcade cabinet..since i’m going to Japan on Monday I whacked it together unpainted at the moment..and don’t mind it.

It has a paewang revolution dual PCB, and a few other bits and pieces.

The BACK/Turbo button is linked together as well, saves having another button on the CP.

First game/Test (Excuse the the crappy sped up video..handbrake screwed me on the compression and yeah..oops..cbf redoing it.)

Few pics..

More soon!

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.