David Hobby's Improvised Light Modifier

To read the Digicam review, click here.

I was checking an interesting blog post Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera, a You Tube Channel from Hong Kong featuring professional photographers using toy or novelty cameras on location in Digital Rev TV. One episode that was most interesting featured guest photographer David Hobby. The camera he was given was a toy Buzz Lightyear digital camera.

Now Mr. Hobby is well known for his flash work, and his ability to improvise light modifiers what hand materials. He's made modifiers from shirt boxes, spaghetti boxes, and plastic dry cleaning bags. He's also used Tupperware to create a functional Lightsphere, but as he is quick to add, it gives the quality light but not necessarily the "pro" look. Granted, the lighting you use to achieve you photograph is more important to the actual technique or equipment you employ, something the viewer never sees. But if "style points" are important to you, you buy the genuine article. But if you're staring out or on a budget, his DIY approach may be the proper path to take.

Watch the video by clicking on the "play button". You get to watch Mr. Hobby eat snake soup, work with people who don't understand English, and generally coax surprisingly good photos under predictably difficult conditions.

The screen shot at the right was taken from the video at 21:54. You are about to see him make a light "dome" by inflating a paper bag and shooting his flash through it. When I saw it, I looked around in my office for something that I might use as  a modifier. I found no paper bag, but did remember I used a similar dodge when photographing in the rain a while back. My original intent was to protect my equipment from the rain with a plastic bag, but as it turned out, the bag helped to expand the sphere of my light, and give me a softer quality of light.

tographer is as good as the simplest camera. -Edward Steichen 1 Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure. – Tony Benn 1 Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter. – Ansel Adams 1 Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment. – Ansel Adams 1 is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators. – Ansel Adams 1 Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs. – Ansel Adams 1 Always seeing something, never seeing nothing, being photographer. – Walter De Mulder 1 Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. – Alfred Stieglitz 1 The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness. – Yann Arthus Bertrand 1 What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. – Karl Lagerfeld 1 The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. -Henri Cartier Bresson 1 I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. -Ruth Bernhard «123Next » Submit A Quote Browse Quotes By Subject By Author Popular Topics Alcohol Anger Anniversary Attitude Baby Beauty Being Ignored Being Single Being Unappreciated Being Used Being Yourself Best Friend Breakup Brother Cheating Childhood Clever Coffee College Cowboy Daughter Depression Disappointment Ego Enemy Environment Ex Expectation Facebook Status Family Father Flirting Friendship Girly God Goodbye Gossip Grandfather Horse Husband Hypocrisy Insecurity Inspirational Insult Jealousy Karma Life Loneliness Love Loyalty Memory Missing You Mistake Mother Past Perfection Pirate Sad Sarcastic Silence Sister Smile Smoking Soccer Son Sorry Stop Caring Stupid Thank You Trust Waiting Wife Wise View All Funny Awkward Moments Funny Birthday Quotes Funny Golf Quotes Funny Marriage Quotes Funny Men Quotes Funny Women Quotes Short Funny Quotes Witty Quotes Official Facebook Page Join us on Facebook

Source : http://www.coolnsmart.com/photography_quotes/

No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. -Edward Steichen

Source : http://www.coolnsmart.com/photography_quotes/

No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. -Edward Steichen

Source : http://www.coolnsmart.com/photography_quotes

The full post can be seen here.

This pair of photos shows a plastic bag covering a Gary Fong Light Sphere. You can see that the size of the light source is more than doubled by this simple addition.

It just goes to show that sometimes if doesn't take much to improve the quality of light Sure, white walls, when available, make a great bounce surface, but a plastic bag may do in a pinch.

Quotes. Speaking of equipment, here a some clever quotes to remind one that it isn't always the equipment that makes the photo.

“A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures – they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’ He said nothing until dinner was finished, then (said) ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.'” By Sam Haskins.

No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. Edward Steichen

Scoff not the other man's camera - It may contain the photos you should have taken. Simon Nathan.

Auxiliary Power For My Metz 44 AF 2 Part 1

Click here to read the entire DPREVIEW.COM  review

In an earlier post, I heralded th`e arrival of the new Fuji EFX-500 flash, shown at left, an OEM flash with enough power and features to warrant a very hard look. To the good, it can take an external accessory battery pack and has wireless TTL exposure options. To the bad, it has a substantial price tag, comparable to the top of the line Nikon speedlights.  However, I still wondered if an older (sealed lead acid battery) Quantum QB1 battery pack could be adapted to work with the Metz 44AF-2 I had just purchased.

My obligatory disclaimer includes both the “you break it, you bought it” warning, and a confession that I already had two working QB 1 battery packs and a bunch of Vivitar 283 power cables for them. This meant that I already had a rechargeable power source and a cable to deliver the power to the Metz.

Click here to read the original Shutterbug article.

 Original Source Information: When the Vivitar 283 was King, there were dozens of do-it-yourselfers trying to find ways to boost the number of full-power flashes available to the photographer.  This particular post (right) uses a BUSS 20 amp Time Delay Fuse as an AA battery stand-in. Since it's dimensions are nearly identical to an AA battery, two can be inserted into the chambers of the Vivitar's removable battery cluster and provide the the necessary leads for the external battery.If you follow the link, you can see that new fuses are not particularly cheap, and they're not particular easy to find locally.

Ebay To The Rescue:After a bit of searching, I found and bought ten of these precious fuses for $8.00 plus $4.00 shipping. This saved me a great deal of money when compared to the price of a "new" one. Admittedly, they had an "aged copper patina" which I'll remove with some 0000 steel wool. After that, I checked each one to be sure that they could still conduct current and hadn't already been "blown". At first, I tried juggling a single AA battery, a fuse, and the two leads of a volt meter, trying to get all the contact points to touch. I solved the problem by placing the batteries on a table, sandwiched between two paperback books to keep them in alignment.

Here you see me holding my newly acquired treasure. I have no idea where theses fuses came from, but I suspect they were salvaged from some remodel or update. They're obviously used, and old. but they all checked out. I paid for ten fuses, but got eleven. Sweet.

Just for fun, I measured the fuses with a dial caliper, and found that their diameters were within 2/1000" of the nominal diameter of a typical AA battery. Their length, however, exceeded a battery's by 24/1000", which is probably not excessive, since the batteries are under spring tension from flash contacts anyway. I'm sure there will be at least that much play.

My next challenge will be getting a secure, soldered juncture between the fuses and a Quantum Battery 1/ Vivitar 283 power cable. I'll need to use a hacksaw for this operation, since I want to keep as much of the shielded wire available for soldering.

Stay tuned, folks!