Sunday, December 26, 2010

The Lastolite Trigrip / Triflip handle fix

   
I like my Lastolite Trigrip, its a nice diffuser (a bit pricey though, so I only keep a few), very comfortable and well made except for one defect.  I've purchased 2, and my friend 3.  So between the 2 of us we have 5 of them in various sizes but of the 5, 3 of them have had the velcro handle strap detach from the plastic grip.  The strap is held in with a metal pin that is hot glued to the plastic handle.  This seems to fail and the pin detaches,  I don't know where mine went, I just opened it up one day and it was gone.  Now Lastolite will repair it if you send it back in, but I don't have the time or desire to, plus the one I have has some sentimental value as I had Joe McNally sign it when I went to his advanced workshop.  So in looking at it I decided to just field repair mine.  All I needed was a simple zip tie.


As you can see the fabric strap has a loop in it where the metal pin would go, so I just replaced it with a zip tie that I wrapped around in the inside to the handle attaching it around the diffuser frame.


First I pushed the zip tie through to the other open end of the handle.


I next looped it back over so that it now wrapped around the frame of the diffuser.


Next I simply put the strap onto the zip tie and closed it up.



To clean things up I cut the excess from the zip tie off, and then pushed the head of the tie inside where it won't be seen.



And Viola, here it is all done and ready to be used again.