Sunday, October 4, 2009

The new gun

Erm...my hands were so itchy today. Not about getting something(although the new Sony A850 full frame is very tempting...) but I'm itchy to redo my alien gun for macro. The old alien gun is good, but it creates harsh shadows below my subjects.

So here it is...Alien gun V.2, the Twin Matterhorn. Hehe, just wanted it to sound great. :p.



What's with the twin 'horn' you might ask. Here, let me illustrate for you.





That's basically my noob theory in macro lighting. Basically it's made with the same method as the old gun. Leftover boxes folded to fit the flash head and the inner part was glued with aluminium foil paper.






Proudly DIM(do it myself) in Malaysia.

Some test shots before bringing it outside.




At least less harsh light in the middle of the subject.

Time to bring and test it outside.



















So far it perform better than the old gun, although still cannot really replace a dedicated macro ring flash that cost more than Rm1k. Cost, if it includes buying the aluminium foil, won't come to Rm10. The only downside is that it blocks or limits the flash power due to the design and the length that the light needs to travel. Had to bump up the iso a little or lower down the shutter speed to get a good exposure. Happy DIM!

4 comments:

  1. look good lah the lighting..altho i see like got bias 1 side the brightness. or maybe the postion u took photo..lol..but still..nice..u bump up the flash power also? or using max power oledi?

    ReplyDelete
  2. hehe. actually the alignment also larilah between the two matterhorn. biasalah engineering kampung2. hahah. might do a proper one later but so far i'm satisfied with this one. flash power full 1/1 at 24mm. if i'm using aperture more than 20, shutter would be around 1/40, iso up to 320 or 400.

    ReplyDelete
  3. wah nice la bro..very2 helpful n i'll try it later...

    ReplyDelete
  4. thanks bro. just don't forget that at both of the tips, do make sure that the light coming out is not to the bottom only. what i did, for eg on the left side, i cut about 70% at the bottom, and 50% at the inner side. from my noob theory, light will come out to the bottom, as goes out at the sides too, meaning an even exposure. hope you get what i'm saying. haha. do refer to the 2nd illustration on the light rays. cheers!

    ReplyDelete