The only downside to this desk was its depth. Unless you used a laptop or something on it, there really wasn’t much space at all.

In order to overcome this, the thinking cap came on and with some inspiration spurred on by this workspace and the whole Ikea Hackers movement. I decided to see what I could do to improve the desk, rather than go out and buy something totally different. (I did look, but didn’t see anything that fit my needs and that was affordable – so might as well make something!)

My idea started off as to use an extra shelf. Raised, so I could place the monitors on it and gain much needed desk space underneath back. I had a LACK wallshelf hanging around so I played around with that first, to get an idea of what would work.

Using some old Manfrotto boxes and the LACK, this is what it looked like:

So all I needed, was some brackets to raise the shelf up..and the shelf it self. Ended up settling on the CAPITA brackets and the EKBY AMUND shelf.

Here was the final result, at a cost of under $65 AUD. Pretty good for more functionality, looks decent as well!

If you’re interested and want to see the progress shots on how it was all put together, check out the flicKR set here.

Interested in peoples thoughts on this! Let me know what you think.

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:

Playing with some lighting, as you do!

Click here to view the embedded 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.

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.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Few pics..

More soon!

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/

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.

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: