Monday, August 23, 2010

The Penny Office Depot Pencil boxes are back! With a twist this time...

So with the back-to-school sales, Office Depot is selling one penny pencil boxes again (The black ones I posted about last year made great snoots for my sb-600/800's)! Yay! But here is the thing, this year they no longer have black color ones, only bright kiddie type colors. I was bummed when I noticed this, but this year they replaced the black ones with clear ones!

So when you're given lemons, make some lemonade, right? These clear ones make for great quick light diffusers! putting it on just like a snoot it works great for blasting light in all directions, up, left right front back etc! I tested it and it was very effective on my green frog, providing a nice catch light while pushing a lot of light straight up. Noticing this, plus thinking about what to do with the insert part of the pencil box, I cut the end off and put a small piece of aluminum inside to stop light from going straight up. Now the light pushes back down reflecting around more and hopefully diffusing a little better. It greatly controlled upward spill. One could take this even further and make a curved reflector inside the box part so that light would only push out of front and sides, or even just the front.

Here is a shot of it lighting up my froggy test subject.

So for only one cent you can have a nice diffuser that won't look too ghetto, ala the David Hobby soup container. It also won't break the bank and cost as much as a Fong whatchamacallit. Just think of how many of these you could buy for one of his! (btw, limit is 3, so hurry up and grab some while you can!)


No comments:

Post a Comment