I just was hunting a softbox but can't get past the fact they have tripled in price since I last looked. Same for trying to find any sort of studio lights even something as low power as 150w lights. Soooo, I am back to using my old strobist flashes. Not to bad as I have a couple Yongnuo el cheapo YN460's and an older than dirt Vivitar 273 to go with my PT04tm RF triggers. They work well enough for me but I was hoping to upgrade a bit, however money being what it is and, well I really don't need fancy, even Alien Bee's are overkill for now. I mean who knows in a few months I could drop over dead. If I could only be so lucky...but I digress (just ask Gary...he'll tell ya that is one thing I am actually good at...I hijack my own threads...hehehehe)

Anyway, I was sleuthing around Amazon, eBay and the other usual suspects and I did buy another YN460 used, it's the old version but mine are OK and they are easy to modify. Nice decent flashes if you do studio stuff on a small scale. But then on to the softboxes and I about fell over on prices. Crappy knock-off Made in China by prisoner labor models are in the $60+ range and the name brand (though well made for sure) are $200-$300 no problem and we haven't even added the support and mounting hardware which ain't cheap.

I already have a nice Lumiquest Softbox III so I thought I would check their website in the scratch 'n dent offerings where you can find some really nice bargains. But I found a NEW and much larger softbox which looks super. It's not large as I would like but it has the advantage of portability and nice quality. Still it's not cheap at about $50 give or take where you buy it. It's called the Softbox LTp and is 10"x14" in size:

http://www.lumiquest.com/products/LTp.html

Though it is a perfectly dreadful name...I mean WTH? LTp? I want some of whatever that old geezer is on if that name makes sense!! hahahahaha....still I think it would be perfect for an over head light on my product shots letting me use the SBIII for front lighting and using my reflector cards made from good old Elmer's Foam Core board in any variety of colors to help enhance edges or fill in shadows.

So short story long...anyone tried this new model yet?

Here are some shots of the Rube Goldberg/Red Green inspired studio gear and setup.

Setup:


One of my setups for a ring I have. Notice the Lumiquest Softbox III to the left of the camera. It is attached to an inexpensive, and not completely issue free but very nice fully manual Yongnuo YN460 Flash. The duct tape thing is my own snoot made from a vehicle window screen I bought at the 99-Cent Store. I cut it up, rolled it into a cone then held it together with good old duct tape. I can then just slip the wide end over whatever flash I am using, in this case an OLD Vivitar model 273 I found at a thrift shop for $5.95.

The pebbles are bought on sale at Michael's Arts and Craft Hobby Store for just about $2.00 for what you see there.

I use the snoot to shoot directly at the stones on the ring to add a bit of sparkle. And here is the shot from that cheap gear:


I think it's not too bad considering.

Colour me impressed! I've been very interested in this type of small-scale studio lighting. I have absolutely no gear for it whatsoever, and every time I look at the costs for some of this stuff, I figure I can just wait a bit longer before diving into it But to get those kinds of striking results using even less styrofoam and duct tape than a classic Dr Who episode is rather impressive.

By the way, I bet my Vivitar flash is older than yours It's an archaic 1900 model from the dawn of time. It immediately and permanently fries any remote trigger I try to attach it to. I only ever use it on my camera with the cord, because I figure it might fry the hot shoe. I think the gentleman who originally owned it bought it in the early 70's for his Spotmatic (which I also now own). But it still works flawlessly.

wow, thanks!! I am always amazed when folks like some of my shots. So really thanks for kind words.

And YUP you win on the oldest Vivitar for sure!! hehehehe...all I know is I to hunt for old flashes and other gear at a couple near by thrift shops as much of the stuff I will use people don't want today. I have found, dunno about you, but my older flashes can have a warmer or even yellow color temp which can be an issue. I usually relegate those flashes to full blasting a background to white or it seems to work nicely with the snoot.

A lot of the credit goes to several sources but it also helps I am the function over form sorta guy...the older strobist philosophy was very much like that so it appealed to me a great deal. But as I read more and more of the recent stuff they are talking $300 lights and all manner of fancy gear with the word "photograph" printed somewhere on the box. Same stuff costs 10% of the price if you can just think it through...which is when I can be a bit dense...hehehehe...

But like everyone else, I started with the "light tent"...man if we could only show folks how limiting those are and for $20 they can buy a stack of 5-10 sheets of that Foam Core then just arrange those boards for whatever you need. I know some folks who built pin together boxes with cut outs covered by velum then blast their light through those cut out windows. I often use cheap "A-Clamps" on a lower corner of a sheet to hold it in place or you can just use pins to pin them together. The pins can hold a suprisingly long time if you are lucky...

Here is a shot of my actual work space for my product shooting:



You can see here I built a table into a wall length closet of my spare bedroo...errr...office...hehehe:


I even used some left over carpeting from when I carpeted the back of my pickup since these old knees don't seem to enjoy crawling around on the ribs in the bed of the pickup like once upon a time...weird, huh?

In those shots you can also see how I DIY'd the snoot using some cool grid material bought, again, at Michael's for something like $0.19/8"x10" sheet. I use it as grids in front of lights or just hold it over a piece to soften light a bit more or tone down a hot spot I just can't get rid of. Hcek, here are a few of the shots I have taken of the setups I have used over time:
[url:156og621]www.brecklundin.com/Lenses-Gear-and-Setu...hting/14849146_wYTY5[/url]

And here on my Flickr gallery I explain the snoot a bit more:
[url:156og621]www.flickr.com/photos/brecklundin/sets/72157619165175213/[/url]

I will add I have learned so much just from threads talking about DIY work areas and tools. Some I have never followed through with but many have worked out great. Maybe we can use this thread to share some of that sort of thing.

I know I just don't have the funds anymore to spend on fancy gear, plus I really find enjoyment in DIY...and not just because I am cheap. One project I really want to build is one of these free standing shooting tables using a sheet of perspex to allow lighting from all angles:
[url:156og621]www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-220PX-Plexiglas...-Still/dp/B0010EKUEG[/url]

I just cannot see the value of $300-$600 given it can be made using PVC tubing and ya don't even need to glue it together so it can be torn down when you need the extra room. But one of those tables is something I need to overcome the limitation of how I can light things in my closet workspace. I suppose I could build something to sit on the work surface with room for lighting but if I am gonna go to that trouble why not just build a fully free standing table instead, right?

Oh, I get a bunch of ideas from the videos over at [url:156og621]www.learnmyshot.com[/url] (neat free videos and I LOVE their concrete utility poles for lights or whatever using old cans filled with Quikcrete and any sort of material to use as an upright pole. Better than a $100 light stand, right? I have saved up some 32-oz cans from tomato's or other veggies.

hehehehe... your comparison to Dr. Who episodes got me giggling...maybe we can start a "steampunk" style of photography? But would that mean going back to pinhole cameras? d'oh!!! hehehehehe...

Oh, you know what I use for my continuous white background material? I buy old rolls of the whitest wide format printer paper I can find on eBay. usually the paper is either expired for printing purposes but it is fantastic for backgrounds. Plus it's smooth which since I shoot close to smaller items can matter. My current roll was something around $30, including shipping, for 48" (???) wide and ~30-yards long.

But let's share tips and see if we can get some fun going on for this sort of thing. I also like that it scales to whatever size you need for your purposes or just due to space limitations. I have a few buds who shoot their scale model cars or even action figure collections using the foam core now and are much happier. Plus you can take your white balance reference shot using one of the boards or the paper. I admit I am lazzzy about that though. D

Oh, I was negotiating a price on one of the those LTP's from Lumiquest but the seller would not drop below a point where I could have it here Wednesday via Amazon Prime for the same price...the seller was using 1st class but charging $7.95. I felt badly as I prefer to support the small guy but time is also a factor.

next I'll share the story about how this photo came about, a total accidental discovery:



it started out like this:


Notice the two colors on the almost bisecting the bowl? Sort a blue on the right and brownish on the right? I learned a thing about reflecting light...but it's near bed time and I want to read some more of The Wind-up Girl tonight.

Very insightful stuff Since you mentioned action figures, now I want to go out and buy a bunch of foam panels to take pictures of some of my very few collectible action figures (silly Evil Dead 2 paraphernalia I'm rather fond of).

Are there any affordable remote flash triggers out there that work with old-style negative-trigger flashes?

g'mornin'...

Thanks for understanding I can be a tad...well what is the written analog of "high verbal"??? hahahaha.....anyway, thanks!

As for your Bruce Campbell "issues"...you ain't alone...I have always enjoyed his acting. And The Evil Dead rocks...but Army of Darkness will always be one of my favs.

Now on to the negative polarity flashes and remote triggers...honestly I dunno. Just in case you were asking about the Vivitar ya mentioned I looked up the Vivitar 1900 and all I can find about it is that it has a high trigger voltage in the 90-125v range but nothing to indicate it's a negative polarity.

You have this link for trigger voltages right?
[url:n2ruezkn]www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html[/url]

It's pretty complete.

I honestly have never run into trying to solve an issue with a negative polarity flash so I can't honestly offer a suggestion. I guess we would try a question on the Yongnuo group over on Flickr? Or their Strobist group might offer some help as well. I am out of my depth on that solution though. Now I am curious though. Weirdly I found little info online about these types of flashes other than they can be harmful to modern DSLR's...well, no-duh!! hahahaha...

If looking at el cheapo remote RF triggers, I like the new models from Yongnuo but the "old" PT04's I have are just fine for my needs and I really have no idea who made this particular set. On eBay when I bought them they were shown as PT-04tm which were actually different from other models labeled PT-04...all these Chinese makers can be really confusing to unravel. I know today people seem to be happy with the

Anyway, which flashes are do you have which use a negative center polarity? I wonder if you could just crack it open and reverse the wiring of the center pin and side terminal to roll your own positive-polarity flash? Or perhaps just pick up a set of triggers that use the sync cord instead of the shoe to trigger the flash? Just "typing out loud here". I did flickr search for flash trigger polarity:
[url:n2ruezkn]www.flickr.com/search/groups/?w=71917374...ative+polarity+flash[/url]

Mixed results as usual online anymore. Not sure any real onclusions are reached other than negative polarity flashes are kinda rare to find but reading the whole thread someone did state they just reversed the wires to make them work with the "ghetto triggers".

Actually this set of triggers is what I got, the ad might have claimed them as PT-04TM but they look to be PT-04 GY's instead....eh, who cares they work fine for me:
[url:1ju480t5][/url]

I guess the newer RT-602 series is the preferred style anymore...but whatever works when we are talking this inexpensive compared to the Radio Poppers or other higher end RF triggers.

I don't know for a fact that it's a negative polarity trigger, I just assumed it was since it was frying triggers on contact. The RT-602's are what I fried initially (2 of them), and then some other kind I found on eBay which brand I've forgotten. Perhaps those products just can't handle the high voltage? Whatever it is, just putting the flash on them (not even triggering it) caused them to die immediately, and then they'd lock my camera's shutter control in the open position whenever I tried to use them as remote shutter triggers.

I've had fun using long exposures and then lighting subjects with the flash from different angles using the test button. But it's not very intuitive, and there's a lot of guessing about the amount of light I need for proper exposure.

I just read that page you posted that lists flash voltages, very interesting. It answers a lot of questions. For one thing, it tells me that there's no real difference between using a hot shoe and a wire so I'm subjecting my camera to the same 100v+ no matter how I connect the flash to my camera. It seems Pentax cameras can handle the high voltage for a few shots, but then the whole thing seizes until you can shut it down and let it rest for a few minutes (I can confirm this with my K-5, and am never trying it again from now on).

Friendly Photon wrote:
ahhhh...now I see, I thought you had checked the polarity already...the one short coming of the 602's is they are limited to a trigger voltage < 12v. I know my Vivitar 273 is about 280-300v and it works just fine on the older PT04's I mentioned. In fact that was a selling point for these triggers. I did however have to replace the battery in the Tx unit almost the day after getting them because it was either really old or just a crappy battery resulting in phantom or missed triggering.

And yeah, I have read about people who put high voltage flashes on these triggers and they just did not even get to past the "smoke test" with the power off. Maybe there is something odd in the wiring on these old flashes.

But one way around the trigger voltage thing should be to use the PC/Sync cord if the Rx devices on your trigger set has a PC/Sync cord port.

I admit I was worried my 273 would smoke my trigger Rx units but nope they handle the voltage and the 273 is a higher voltage than your 1900 which is "only" around 90-125v or so...it's weird because I have taken part in a lot of threads about this, especially Canon, and the real thing is none of the mfg's are willing to put the safe voltage handling in the manual for the body. Only something vague that some older flashes can damage the body's flash circuitry. An observation made by some Canon users was the PC connector used the same circuitry in the body as the hotshoe so if the flash was safe to use via PC cord connection then it should be fine on the hotshoe. Me? I figure why push it when you can buy other less costly flashes that don't have any worries. Plus every time you run the higher voltage through the circuity it has to have negative impact from fatigue is nothing else. So the life span of that camera's flash sub-system would seem likely to be reduced with each firing.

One thing I miss most from switching from Canon to Pentax are my flashes. I loved the 430EX II and the 580 EX II flashes...but since I could not or would not afford the tools needed to use remote E-TTL II and flash settings I might as well just go with the cheaper flashes and triggers. So all I do now is buy flashes with full manual control and my old usually reliable cheap triggers. And the flashes are one thing I just really dislike from Pentax...and the real reason is the plastic foot compared to the metal foot on the Canon flashes. Yeah, it's a small thing but to me the build quality just inspired a lot more confidence. Then what do I do? I go to the cheapest flashes around. Still I wish I had just kept the Canon flashes even if I would be using them the same as the el cheapos...at least I would not need to patch the buttons with aluminium foil to get them to sorta work...hahahaha...

Friendly Photon wrote:
Oh, cool...I love that page...lost of good info there and it's been around a long time but can really be hard to find for some reason.

As for using the PC cord option I dunno but like I mentioned more than a few folks mentioned to me that the PC connection and the hotshoe used the same circuit so nothing is saved. But I seem to recall that often the PC cord voltage was different for some reason and felt to be safer as well...I honestly don't know. There is always the option of that Wein voltage adapter for an ungawdly $50 (EACH!!) or whatever...but they apparently work, however for that money I would rather buy a flash since anything needing the adapter will likely not be a manual control flash anyway.

And I really know even less about the Pentax flash internals than Canon...since I use flash only for my "studio" stuff I can "eyeball" the settings well enough to get them right within a shot or two.

BTW, I did something kinda cool with my Pentax IR remote, I put some velco on it and a piece on top of the pop-up flash so when I am working I stop spending so much time trying to find the missing piece of Black Jack chewing gum that passes as a remote from Pentax...hahahaha...man I hated that gum!!

BTW, I suspect the shut down thing with the Pentax is a heat related thing...maybe? Either way I wouldn't do it anymore...

I got my LTP (I just can't keep using that lowercase "p") yesterday and it is indeed a good 2x larger than the Softbox III and I think it is going to be a great tool to have. I am not up for any work today but as soon as I am able I'll put up not only side-by-side shots of both of them but also try to get some shots to shot the effect each has on the same shot. Nothing special just to give an idea how the light works out. I haven't decided if I will be using this on my product shots for overhead lighting or from the top-front angled a bit down. We'll see what happens but no promise on when I am going to be up for doing this...