When you don’t mind packing some extra weight and bulk, sealed lead acid (SLA) battery packs are great. They last forever and recycle the flash very quickly. Just be careful when shooting at full power that you don’t melt your flash head! I also like that SLA batteries are supposed to be charging when not in use. This means they’re always ready to shoot when you are.

Making one is pretty simple if you can drill and solder. See for yourself!
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I wanted to make an external battery pack but I didn’t want to use “dummy batteries” to connect it to the flash, I wanted a jack. Whenever I modify/make something I try to make it look as though it came like that from the factory, or could have. That was my goal for this, a clean install. I chose to mount the jack in place of the “bracket fitting,” which is next to the “external power source socket”. I don’t use flash brackets so I didn’t mind ditching the fitting. As far as I knew, no one had ever done this before so I had no idea if it would even fit, but I was confident I could make it fit. So I just started drilling…
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As promised, here is the dual speedlite bracketry for the Amvona softbox. The single speedlite version was more than adequate for most situations but I wanted something that could easily overpower the sun behind a model.

Materials used:

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I haven’t designed a real “business card” yet but I wanted something I could hand out in the meantime to those who ask about my work (I know, I know, my gallery still isn’t up…). All I know is that when I finally design one it’s going to incorporate spot glossing/UV, which isn’t exactly cheap considering 500 is the minimum order quantity, so I don’t want to rush it. For now, this’ll do.
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I’d like to start by giving credit to Honl Photo for the design idea. I had the supplies already so I wanted to see what I could come up with.

For those of you who don’t want sticky-backed velcro on your flash, this is the perfect solution. It’s quite simple to make and only takes a few minutes if you have a sewing machine.

Supplies:

• 1.5″ wide loop velcro, about 10.5″ long and non-adhesive-backed
• 1.5″ wide hook velcro, about 1.5″ long and non-adhesive-backed
• a piece of bicycle inner tube roughly 11″x1.5″
• needle and thread/sewing machine

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I was in the market for a softbox and came across a great deal on an Amvona Dynaphos softbox that I couldn’t pass up. The softbox came with a speedring, which was just a flat, circular sheet of metal with a pattern cut out of the middle that allowed Amvona hot-lights to be removed with a quarter turn. Luckily, it was easy to remove and replace with whatever I wanted. I could’ve modified that metal speedring that came with it but it was pretty beefy and would’ve taken longer to cut. To make life easier, I opted for a piece of 3.2mm styrene (plastic) that I got at a local hobby store (it was with the model train accessories). The actual material isn’t important, you could use styrene, ABS, plexiglass, wood, and so on, as long as its fairly thin and sturdy.

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I had a shoot to do but my “real” softbox hadn’t arrived yet so I had to improvise. I had everything at my house except for the diffusion material, which was only $2 at a local fabric store. Here’s what you’ll need:

• Large cardboard box. A cube will work best but use what you have.
• Aluminum foil
• Spray adhesive and a little duct tape
• Diffusion material. I used white nylon that I found with the wedding gown fabrics at Jo-Ann Fabrics

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