0 Comments Lighting can be the difference between a good shot and a great one. Walk into most professional photographer’s studios and you’ll be confronted with truckloads of lighting equipment. To the average hobby photographer it’s enough to make your mind boggle – and for your stomach to turn as you think about the cost of it all.

Most of us can’t afford a full lighting rig – however what if there was a way to experiment with the type of lighting gear that pro photographers use without spending too much money? What if you could make it yourself. In this post I’ve found 10 DIY Flash and Lighting Hacks that put some of these lighting techniques within the grasp of the rest of us. Some are more involved than others but all are fun and will provide you with some new lighting gear to experiment with. Multi-Super-SB-Ring Light What can you make with six speedlight flashes, a coffee can and a little spare time?

You get a multi-super-sb-ring-light! (pictured left). You could probably also blind a small village if you’re not careful! Find out what it is, how to make one and what the results are like. This one looks like a lot of fun to play with – even if it’s just for the challenge of it and the looks you’d get when you pull it out next time you do a shoot. Poor Mans Ring Flash All you need for this one (pictured left) is a used milk bottle/jug and some scissors. The result is that you’ll have a.

A ring flash is one that fits around the lens – it creates a wonderfully unique lighting effect. They will usually lighten your wallet by a couple of hundred dollars. Paypal Brute Force.

It’s so simple that I whipped one up for myself today in 5 minutes. It worked out pretty good too – not bad for the cost of a couple of liters of milk! If you want to experiment with other methods of making DIY ring flashes you also might want to. This one is a little more involved, but I think will probably get better results. Inexpensive Light Tent Have you ever wanted to replicate the crisp clean product images that you see in catalogs with the products seemingly floating on a white background?

If you do – you need some kind of light tent/light box. As usual, light boxes can cost you quite a bit – but thanks to DPS reader Jeffrey Bail you might be able to achieve the results without having to spend much at all. In our Jeffrey shows you how to turn a box, fabric, tape, glue board and light into a great little light tent. Party Bouncer Card Another cool DIY Hack is this (pictured left) which is so simple yet promises to be so useful and effective.

This one is for those of you with a camera which doesn’t have the capability for an off camera flash. It allows you to bounce some light off the ceiling while also diffusing the light going forward – this will enable you to get a less harsh flash effect that many flashes leave images with. I like this one as it pushes the light out from your flash in two directions which can lead to a more even light rather than just diffusing it – a little more sophisticated. Another quick DIY on diffusing a flash is to put a little translucent magic tape over a flash (or a piece of white tissue paper can do it too).

Any of these methods will decrease the amount of light getting out from the flash onto your subject – hopefully resulting in a more subtle light and a less blown out image. Turkey Pan Beauty Dish Beauty dishes are wonderful pieces of photographic equipment to experiment with – but they can be very expensive. Not any more (at lest if you ). In this hack learn how to use a simple Turkey Pan to get some pretty amazing beauty dish results! The comparison examples in this tutorial between the turkey pan version and the real thing are pretty convincing. I must remember to add Turkey Pans to this week’s shopping list.

If you are a photographer and using flash (either for studio pictures or for outdoor shooting), you are probably aware of the problems that a hot-shoe flash. DIY Flash Softbox. Build this DIY. This is a collection of a few DIY flash softbox ideas for built in flash photography and external flashes. Paper flash softbox.

Lastly – another. Full Budget DIY Lighting Studio It’s time for one last DIY lighting hack – this one attempts to bring it all together with a The author of it takes up the challenge of creating a full studio lighting system for under $75. It includes lights, reflectors, diffusers and flash diffusers – all using items that you could pick up at hardware and craft stores. It also shows you a few test shots at the end of the tutorial that compare different lighting options. You will need your own flash unit to use the flash diffusers on – but the rest is all included in the tutorial. I particularly light the suggestions around globes for the lights. I know a couple of DPS forum members have had similar success with these sorts of lights.