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Using A Cooling Honeycomb As A DIY Gridspot ABOUT SHARE A TIP ADVERTISE STORE
OCTOBER 13, 2008 11 COMMENTS Like 8 0 Tweet 3
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Aerial Photography System

www.Event38.com
Professional Grade Aerial Photos From a
I just love gridspots. The amount of light Hexacopter Drone
control that a gridspot will give you is
3-in-1 Honeycomb Grid
incredible. So, a while back I ordered some
www.expoimaging.com
honeycomb grids from saxonpc. It is with
two of those gridspots that I took the image Rogue Grid: beautiful spot light control
on the left, but first thing first. In fact Saxon from your shoe mount flash.
PC is specializing in making computer cooling Fashion Spikes for Shoes
solutions, little did they know that their
StudsandSpikes.com
honeycomb is just perfect for light control.
Giant selection of spikes, studs, create
OK, they knew, they made a site for it. Yet it
your own shoe design
was fun to say "little did they know".

One of the first projects on DIYP was a coroplast made gridspot, which totally rocked,
but getting those nice black honeycombs tickled so much and I caved in.

In fact this solution is very similar to HonlPhoto's 1/4" and 1/8" gridspot solutions. If you
are willing to settle a bit on the looks and spend a few minutes modding, you can save a
few Dollars. Not that a few dollars will take you anywhere today.
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I got two types of gridspots - the plastic ones and the
Is The Picture Worth The Risk? A Bride Set On Fire
aluminum ones. I thought that the aluminum gridspots will
For A Trash-The-Dress
be stronger, but I was surprised that the aluminum caved
in kinda easily when applying pressure. This is not to say Avoid Email Scams Soliciting Photographers For
that they are bad, but they require more attention and if Money
you are going to be carrying those around, you'll have to
pay attention. How To Correct The Green Cast From A 10 Stops
Neutral Density Welding Glass Filter
The plastic gridspots were strong and more durable and
quickly made it into my photography bag. They were more Making 35mm Slide Like Photography Business Cards
like, throw in the bag and forget about it.

On the left you can see the gridspot with a foamy hosing
attached to my SB 800.

Attaching The Gridspot To The

RECENT COMMENTS
Flash
Each gridspot is wrapped in a foamy. The
foamy constructs the housing for the flash.
Saxon will also supply some adhesive foamy
to wrap around your flash so the housing will
fit tightly. I attached a small piece of Velcro
to the inner housing and used a Honl
Speedstrap and its DIY version to attach the
gridspot to the flash. Perfect! I did this since
I don't like taping stuff directly on my flash.
Yea, I am anal perfectionist in this way and
hate the residue from any tape on the flash
The other option is to order the gridspot
without the housing and to place it inside a
Beer Holder Snoot. It looks professional and
it says "improving" how can I pass on this
fun?
Kay O. Sweaver
Or forego all the fancy gear and use the sound trigger
in Magic Lantern. ;)
How To Build A Scream-Triggered Photobooth · 1
hour ago
Rick
Not necessarily. With the flash, you can get a stronger
image and better lighting control of the scene due to
the potential for a brighter pulse, a brightness which if
sustained by a projector...
The Light Blaster Is A Reality Altering Strobe Based
Projector · 5 hours ago
Valenten Ov Pyrolysis
I think these "trash the dress" things are quite stupid,
but this is even more stupid. Risky for a not-so-
interesting pictures..

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14-Jul-13 2:42 AM http://www.diyphotography.net/using-a-cooling-honeycomb-as-a-diy-gridspot

This is where the plastic honeycomb really Is The Picture Worth The Risk? A Bride Set On Fire
rocked and the aluminum one kinda caved in. For Trash The Dress · 5 hours ago
So this is 2 to Nill for the plastic flavor.

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I took three pictures, all with my Nikon SB 26 pointing at a wall about three meters away.
The first picture was taken without the gridspot at an 85mm zoom settings. The second Like You like this.
shot was taken with the small holes / 10 mm thick (I think it is 30 degrees), and the third
with the small holes / 20mm thick (I think it is the 20 degrees grid). You and 33,799 others like DIYPhotography.

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http://t.co/5Y4yjAgvQB

focal length -> darn good no bulls primer http://t.co

/x00kjwuZsS
No gridspot at all - everything is splashed with color
Datacolor is hosting a free webinar covering almost
everything you need to know to get started on macro
photography. http://t.co/39PkCWBj74

Is The Picture Worth The Risk? A Bride Set On Fire

For A Trash-The-Dress http://t.co/XhVFFYWv9S

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14-Jul-13 2:42 AM http://www.diyphotography.net/using-a-cooling-honeycomb-as-a-diy-gridspot

Deeper Gridspot (50 degrees) - Holy cow! That is a nice circle

Gelling
The housing is perfect to use a Rosco or a
Lee Gel. You just place the gel inside the
gridspot - no Velcro, no adhesive. The gel
will be held by the grid on one side and the
flash on the other. This method will allow you
to quickly replace gels. On the left you can
see how the gel sheet fits in the housing. I
did not cut the sheet and let the spare width,
and let it lie on the side of the housing.

If you are using one of the bigger strobes

like the Vivitar 285, you may need to place some Gaffer's tape on the edges of the gel to
block the light that leaks where the gel ends.

Setup for the Shoes Image

For the image of the shoes, I wanted a nice halo effect. The first thing was to get some
nice clean backdrop. I used some white A0 paper. The first sheet went on the wall. The
second sheet went on my living room table. I really love A0 heavy papers. They are both
cheap and available.

The next step was to prepare the halo effect. I gelled one gridspot and placed it on my
Nikon SB800. I placed the flash very close to the backdrop sheet. (Click the image below
for setup notes).

I wanted to light the shoes with a softbox, but I could not figure out how to place it
directly over the shoes, so I did a small trick. I set the camera to a 5 seconds exposure
and zapped a few flashes while the shutter was open. The gridspot made it possible to
light the shoes and not contaminate the backdrop with white light.

There is a price to be paid using that

technique - if you look closely on the image
(and you can do this by clicking on it), you'll
see that there are several shadow lines. So
my next purchase / project will be to make a
boom stand.

In a similar image with just one splash of

light. The shadows here are better defined
and the key light is restricted to a nice circle.

More Info
Here is the link for the Saxon PC store on the internet - this is where you get those
babies. Check out the four gridspot shipping saver combo.

If you are interested in gelling your flash I strongly recommend visiting Strobist gel
articles (1, 2), and FYI you can get the Rosco gel pack for close to nothing when
ordering anything from B&H. Or you can get a very nice pack of gels over at

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14-Jul-13 2:42 AM http://www.diyphotography.net/using-a-cooling-honeycomb-as-a-diy-gridspot

photogels.com.

If you are wondering how gridspots work, take a look on the video below. It is true that
light and smoke behave very differently, but the demonstration will give an idea on what
happens when passing light (or smoke) through a gridspot does.

Lastly, if you want to spend even less - check out this tutorial for coroplast gridspots.

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11 comments ★ 0

Best Community Share ⤤ ⚙

Roberto Farren | wedding photo •

Thanks for sharing. I have been wanting to play with grids with my
wedding work for a little while and think I try this set up. Regards,
Roberto

Saxxon •

Udi still has these photos of the version 1 of the grids. :) Here is a pic
of the modern 1/4" cell items.
http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st....

To all of you folks who own grids from saxonpc make sure to enter
our Flickr group contest for Q2 09 with some great prizes:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com...

Saxxon •

Some folks have sent me some really great photos lately with the
grids.
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com
/3376/3277332455_1392461b41.jpg?v=0">
And there is a video of customer demo shots:

Customer demo video

Saxon •

There are a few new items on the webstore.

With dowels turned to fit the cells, two products are now capable of
"stacking" the grids for tighter beams.
The Multi-pack now comes with these alignment dowels:
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com
/3163/3070403778_78bff14f86.jpg?v=0">

And the ready to mount modular 4 stage grid

This produces the demo photos below

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com
/3213/3069580311_bae818595a.jpg?v=0">

The 4-stage item has the most control at any given distance.

Here is another demo of beam reduction:

3/4" grid
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com
/3184/2952443975_838ef90c2a.jpg?v=0">
1 1/2" grid
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com
/3229/2953292606_3f521bc76b.jpg?v=0">

Saxon •

This size could be cut. Are you in the US? Would be difficult to ship
outside the US. that large.

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