My latest DIY projects

Recently I’ve ran across several different do-it-yourself (DIY) projects that are very cool, and fairly easy to do. Last night I made a gel holder for my flashes. Before I was always taping my gels onto the flash. That way works, but takes too long and its a pain to always have to go find tape. This gel holder is very simple. Its so simple I can hardly believe I didn’t think of it myself.

It is just a square of cardboard that fits tight around the flash head, and then has slits in it to slide the gel through. A few months ago I got several sample packs of gels for free, and they are about the right size to go in front of the flash.

The other thing I built I mentioned in my last post. A mini-softbox.

It doesn’t look very pretty but the good things about it is that it took 20 minutes to build, and cost nothing. I like the price of free. Free is good. After I took that picture I ended up improving it somewhat by giving it a cardboard frame type of deal so that it will fit on the flash head without needing rubber bands, like I have it on the picture. I went and built the cardboard frame deal right away with gel slots, just in case I need to use gels when I’m using it. I like the softbox, and I guess my next project should be to figure out how to make a big softbox.

In the above paragraph I mentioned something about free, and how free is good. Yesterday I was able to download $118 of OSX software for free. That is very good. Especially since one of those programs was 1 Password. I had been eyeing 1 Password for awhile, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $40 on something that I didn’t really need. Another one of the free items was Enigma 2, a very addictive puzzle game with great graphics. I’ve already wasted way to much time playing it. Its a good brain exercise, so I guess I have a good excuse.

I’m sure ya’ll haven’t seen any recent pictures of me, so I will post one that I took last Tuesday. I was wanting to experiment with taking pictures in the middle of the day and being able to darken the sky.

I took it at 2:30pm. The sun was very bright. I had one flash on full power at camera right, and another flash at 1/2 power at camera left. I like the picture, but I think its deceiving. It makes me look like I should be a big strong guy. Remember, appearances may be deceiving.

In about an hour I’m planning to leave for the youth Christmas banquet. It should be interesting, since they are planning for it to be a formal affair. Patrick Ramos and I are going to wear bow ties. I’m sure that wearing bow ties will encourage formality.

Oh! I should mention one more thing. Yesterday my parents gave me several sets of AA Ni-MH rechargable batteries. That is a very good thing. Two of my sets of batteries were barely any good, and I was getting tired of having 5 second recycle times when I have my flash set on 1/4 power. Now I hardly have to wait for them to recycle when I have them at 1/2 power. I must be a geek if batteries can make me happy. =)

– Aaron

~ by Aaron on December 26, 2008.