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:

Nikon SB-26 1/2@24mm into silver umbrella, camera left.
Nikon SB-26 1/8@85mm, above camera right.

Playing with some lighting, as you do!

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!

A quick look at the Paul C. Buff CyberSync remote triggers.

Transmitter – CST came with a 2.5mm to PC cord – To trigger the unit while keeping the hotshoe free.

Receiver – CSRB came with a host of cables, 3.5mm to PC, 3.5mm to 3.5mm, 3.5mm to 1/4.

Batteries included in all packages. They have colour boxes and printed manuals now to add a bit of spice to the packaging, and boxes/manuals are all generic to cut down on costs.

There’s no mounting hole on the receivers so I use ball bungee’s (You can get them at Bunnings) to strap them to the lightstand or flash as needed.

The test buttons are recessed into the plastic to stop accidental power ups in your bag. I have read of people gluing a small rubber washer around it just to be really tight ass. I don’t believe it’s necessary though.

The receivers have no OFF switch either. They time out after 1 hour. Every time you trigger them this is reset. I like this as with my last triggers, I left them on most of the time – forgetting to turn them off. They are supposed to have a 200 hour life off the 2x AA batteries they run on. (Update: As of June 2010 they are still on the original batteries)

The transceiver slots straight onto the hotshoe with no locking mechanism. The thought behind this is that if for some reason you knocked it off, the trigger would not tear off the hotshoe with it. (I can’t see that happening anyway) but its very sturdy and I think will last well. Time will tell as to how long it lasts as it wears..

Initial testing shows the units trigger perfectly when my 40D is on 6.3fps. Up to my flashes to keep up.

I’ll be heading out Thursday (12/11/09) to snap up some sequences and put these to work. I’ll post them up tomorrow so come back and check out the results then.

I was lucky enough to have these brought down to me from the US, so all up they cost me less than $250USD. In fact they were free, as I got $250USD from a work award that I won. Score!

Paul C Buff are now available in Australia via their online store – http://www.paulcbuff.com.au/