Posts Tagged ‘Flash accessories’

Photography can be an expensive business. Never mind the cost of the cameras and lenses, even photography accessories are often expensive. Thankfully, for many photography accessories there are cheaper alternatives available.

They might not look so good, and might not even work as well. But if they can do 90% of the job for 10% of the price, they can be very handy if you can't afford to shell out for the 'proper' product. It can also be a good idea to try out a cheap version of an accessory, to see how useful it actually is for your photography, before you decide to splash out on the full price model.

So, in this post, we'll look at a few different cheap alternatives to popular photography equipment.

Highlighting a small part of a photo with flash can be used to help draw the viewer's attention to that part of the image. When this technique is combined with an overall lack of light over the rest of the image, this can create a very dramatic photo, with the highlighted area really standing out.

However, with a standard speedlight flash this technique can be difficult to achieve as the light from the flash spreads out too much, covering most of the frame. You can reduce the coverage of the flash by moving it closer to the subject, but depending on how small an area you want highlighted, this could result in the flash having to be so close that it appears in the frame.

A cheap and simple solution to this problem is a grid. A grid attaches in front of your flash, and creates a narrow, focused beam of light. This allows you to have your flash positioned further away from your subject, while highlighting just a small area with the flash. In this article we'll look particularly at how to create your own DIY grid for your speedlight flash, and how different variations affect the light.