DIY Project : Honey Comb Flash Adaptor

It's been years after my last DIY project which I was actively flexing out my hands and mind to do some DIY lighting mods. Mainly due to my time been filled up by work and, after being a father of two, I had lost almost all my free time.

I'd op to DIY up one honey comb flash adaptor for a while. I've been looking for black plastic straws for this DIY project in local major supermarkets. It took me some time to get one as black straws are extremely rare item to put on sale. Most straws that could be easily been found on rack are mostly coloured one.

Why straws ?

When I completed my DIY flash grid adaptor, I was expecting to see a circular but I was wrong. I wanted to have a circular flash throw. After some reading from internet, if I wish to have a circular shape light throw, I need to have a circular shaped grid adaptor.

Straws are the best material to be a circular grid adaptor since it is circular. And it's cheap as well. For a package of black straws which consist of 100 straws would only cost me RM 5.00, but as I mentioned above, black straws are extremely rare and not easy to find. I was lucky enough to find one in a supermarket near my house.

So, I've got the major material I want. Let see what other things needed to complete this adaptor:

Black straws, scissors and/or knife for cutting, cloth tap, glue. ruler and a piece of hard cardboard. I will construct this adaptor base to my Sony F43am flash.

First, took the outer circumference measurements of the flash head. For the case of Sony Flash F43am, the circumference measurements of the flash head is 68mm by 40mm.

Then from the measurements, determine how many layers of straws needed for this adaptor:

For F43am, I need around 6 layers of straws, each layer require 10 straws. Hence, I needed about 60 numbers of straw tube.

Then, cut out total of 60 numbers of straw tube, each length about 1 inch long.

By using a cloth tape as base, carefully arrange the straw tube for the first layer onto the sticky side of the cloth tape. By doing so, I could temporary secure the tubes into one layer.

Then apply glue on the first layer and carefully arrange the second layer of tubes.

Repeat this step until I have my desired measurement and size:

Secure this honey-comb head with more cloth tapes.

Now for the adaptor to the flash head. I use hard cardboard my building material being reason that hard cardboard is easy to work with and it cost none to nothing. For a huge piece of hard cardboard just cost my RM 3.00 and it's easily purchase in major bookstore.

Again, from the flash head circumference measurements, I measured out the required length and cut out the cardboard.

Fold it up to get into shape and fit well onto the flash head. Glue the straw-made honey comb into the cardboard holder, secured it with more cloth tapes and/or glue, and walla, I got my honey comb flash adaptor!

So, how does the flash spill would look like ? Here's the first test shot from this adaptor:

It's circular as I wanted !! :D

And the comparison between my flash grid adaptor and my honey comb adaptor. It's clearly shown that the honey comb has more flash spill than the grid one.

And the total time to take to make this DIY ? 2 hours. The precious two hours I had while I was waiting for my dinner. LOL.