Leisure

Ben Ledman, a photo by killy on Flickr.

Spent the majority of friday night making a DIY softbox. It turns out that Carol is a much better engineer than i am.

Built from foam core, black gaffer tape, foil and the wrapping that comes around mac towers (used as the diffusion material), the softbox works extremely well. It's double diffused and the light comes out evenly.

It was designed with a Vivitar 285HV in mind in that it allows the flash to zoom in and out. For this particular photo, the flash was zoomed out with makes the light dropoff noticeably shallow.

The inside of the softbox is lined with foil paper which, i think, gives the light a harsher quality than if i had lined the inside with simple white paper. I'll probably spend a portion of my Sunday creating a white version and posting a comparison picture.

In other news, I am now the proud owner of a (used E+ condition) Nikon ED 80-200 2.8 zoom lens. Sharp as a tack and built like a tank - I am looking forward to posting some portraits from this one soon.