fiberstrobe

Rim light

2011-11-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

My previous two projects aimed to create ringflash adapters. However, the effect with a ring flash is getting boring after a while. My favourite home studio pictures were actually taken with the fiberstrobe V3 adapter using extreme angles:

The adjustment of the arms were not always simple so I decided to create someting really easy to use adapter. I think the picture below is quite self-explaing:

I still have to do some experiments with the mask (on the right) designed for small subjects to photograph.
At the end a new picture I really like. It has a nice 3D effect, which is impossible to get with a simple ringflash.

And shooting with the rim light adapter is really effortless and just by changing the plane of light really dramatic changes can be observed.

I'm back (with rim light)

2011-11-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

Blogging is not really my style and during summer I used simlpe set-ups. Nothing fancy lighting with fiber optics. So there was not much to post and I was quite busy with other work related things. Now the winter is back and I had a bit of time to create something from the leftovers of my 1mm diameter fibers. Now I post only the results and will come back with the details about the new fiber optic flash adaper. For the photos I used a nex-5 and a yongnuo YN460-II flash.

super macro mod

2011-06-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

When I tried the new ringflash adapter for the 100mm macro, I noticed that the very closed subjects are not well illuminated, especially when there was something tiny in the middle of the frame. It's probably due to the narrow beam of light coming out at the end of the fibers (I have to check the correct angle). So I decided to modify a bit the adapter to tilt a bit the fibers towards the center. I added foam stripes with a velcro and attached to the ring (hairy part of the velcro stripe fixed to the ring) leaving a bit of space also for the fiber stripes. Sounds confusing but the pictures below will explain it better:

Now, the fibers are looking more to the centre:

I had not so much time to test the rig, but it seems to work quite well. Some pictures below (iso200, f16-18)

Big Brother is lighting you

2011-05-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

Although the NEX5 is not yet a perfect system for macro photography, I really enjoyed the ringflash project. So I decided to make a bigger version for the my DSLR (sony a100). I have two macro lenses for this camera, a minolta 100m f2.8 macro that is one of the finest piece of glass. I also like my sigma f2.8 50mm macro but the 100mm macro is more versatile and a bit bigger challenge to make a ringflash for it, due to the longer subject to lens distance. I had to use a bigger diameter tube to mount the fibers on it and tried to make the brunches of fibers adjustable. I'm still thinking how to make it appropriate for closer distance, when I use it for supermacro.
Few days ago I finished the Big Brother:

One added function compared to the previous ringflash adapter is that I drilled two holes to the bottom part in order to adjust the focus manually. It's not perfect but not bad. I used velcro around the tube to fix the fiber brunches. The idea is that in this way I can adjust their position and even their angle. The attachment of the other end of the fibers to the on-board flash is still not perfect, but it works. I used some cardboard, ducktape and a bit of velcro. And finally some pictures taken with the rig:

Saturday morning snapshooting

2011-05-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

Every saturday my little son has sport. While he is doing his exercises I have a bit of time for photography in the little forest nerby. Approximately 45 minutes. Not much but enough for some snapshooting. I used this week the nex-5 (18-55mm+marumi 5dp achromat) with the new ringflash adapter. Some pictures below:

How to build a ring-flash adapter

2011-05-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

There are many good optical fiber-based DIY ringflash adapters. For examples see the following links:

http://fuzzcraft.com/ringlight4-0.html

http://photos.soboring.org/fiber_optic_ring_flash/

However, I found a bit their installation a bit complicated. To make such adapter more user-friendly I built the whole concept around a tube that can be slide around the lens. Below I provide a tutorial on how I built my ringflash adapter for sony nex-5. You can follow the same principle to build your own for any camera type.
I bought a plastic waterpipe in the local hardware store. I used 75 mm diameter tube, but you should consider that there is an effective subject to flash (here adapter) distance for ringflash work. It's approximately between the half of the diameter and twice the diameter of the ring. So the optimum for my adapter is between 4 and 15 cm. For 100 mm macro lens with longer subject to lens distance you have to use larger diameter tubes.
I cut a 10 cm piece with fretsaw:

I glued plastic-foam pieces into the inner part of the tube to hold it firmly around the lens. This way I can easily slide the tube to the lens:

For this adapter I used 36 pieces of 1mm diameter optical fibers but the 0.75mm one would have worked better. The length varied according to the placement of the end of the filament. I cut 3 little pieces of velcro stripe (hooked one, 25mm according to the opening of the flash) and glued 12 fibers into each leaving some overhangs:

Then I prepared the part mounting the end of the fibers to the flash. For this I used a plastic bag lock (I don't know the proper English term, I found this in the kitchen. Aluminium folie was used as spacer).

I glued the three velcro stripes together and fitted the fibers through the plastic mount and glued it (you have to use a special glue not dissolving the fibers. I used a polystyrol glue from pattex). Later on I trimmed back the overhangs and polished them.

The next step is the fixing of the end of the fibers to the tube. I cut a velcro stripe (hooked one) encircling the tube into 4 equal pieces and fitted the fibers in between the hooks spacing them more or less equual distance. The stripe going to the below part of the tube was further cut into two pieces:

The velcro stripes were stuck to the tube (I used a self-adhesive type of velcro) and they were further fixed with duck tape. I still don't have a good solution how to attach the end of the fibers to the flash. I glued two layers from the plastic foam panel also used for the inner part of the tube to provide support at the proper height. After bending the bunch of the fibers (with the help of a hair drier, use it carefully!!) I glued the end fitting on the top of these foam pieces and further fixed it with duck tape.

The flash adapter works well but the sony nex flash is really weak. It has a guide number of 7, but still at ISO400 I can use f16 most of time (depending on the distance and the colour of the subject).
For results, see my flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberstrobe/sets/72157626491664288/
If you have any question or suggestions, don' hesitate to contact me. You can also send me picures of your own version, I will post it on my blog.
Have a good tinkering.

Ringflash adapter for Sony NEX-5

2011-04-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

For couple of weeks, I have a new toy, a sony nex-5 mirrorless camera. I like it a lot and I'm still very impressed with the resolution and the sensitivity of it's sensor. Of course I like the compactness of the body and the tiltable high resolution LCD screen, which makes the camera a perfect macro photography tool. But there are some problems. There is no dedicated macro lens (yet) for the nex and it has only a small detachable toy flash that is not even compatible with the wireless protocol of the sony alpha system. So it can't trigger my big flash in a wireless way. Nevertheless, I'm trying to get out the best from the camera. According to the rumors there are macro lenses on the way from both sony and sigma. Untill they arrive I've also tried the 18-55mm kit zoom with a Marumi achromat lens and I achieved nice close-ups close to 1:1. Although the flash is small I decided to give a try and built something with optical fibers to have a better illumination of the macro subjects. Here you can see the result. A ringflash adapter for sony nex-5:

I'm quite happy with the results so far. At iso400 I managed to use f18 with correct exposure.
The alignment between the end of the fibers and the flash should be improved but I don't have really good idea yet.
I had time only to take some test shoot in the the house. I'm sorry for the boring orchid shoots, but this is my mostly used test subject:

ISO400, f14

Iso400, f18

Iso400, f16

ISO400, f16

In my next post, I will give detailed "how to build" instructions

Fiberstrobe on Strobist

2011-04-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

I’m very proud that a post about the fiberstrobe has been posted on Strobist, one of the best photography related blog and if you are in flash photography it should be on the top of your favorites. I’ve personally learned a lot from that site and I’m very happy now that I could give something back to the strobist community. And what a cool title. If you haven’t checked yet, follow the link:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-you-cut-one-light-off-three-more.html

You can imagine that the number of visits on my blog have been skyrocketed and I got many clicks on my flickr page as well:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberstrobe/

The story about fiberstrobe was taken over by many website and I hope that many DIY projects are on the way. If you have one ready, just send me some pictures and I will post them.

Some more links to sites wrote about the fiberstrobe:

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/03/18/homemade-fiberstrobe-uses-fiber-optics-to-split-light/

http://www.cosmictechie.net/hacks/homemade-%E2%80%9Cfiberstrobe%E2%80%9D-uses-fiber-optics-to-split-light/

http://www.photozz.com/fizz/14874603.aspx

http://high-tech-gadgets.info/2011/03/19/fiberstrobe-fiber-optics/

http://www.tuttoleo.it/wordpress/fiberstrobe.html

http://www.photoweeklyonline.com/4-in-1-octopus-flash-unit/

http://smillamagazine.com/legge/www.clickblog.it/post/10659/fiberstrobe-giocare-con-le-fibre-ottiche

http://www.diyphotography.net/21-photographs-and-lighting-setups

Fibers go underwater II.

2011-03-06T05:17:00.000-08:00

After completing the first version of the ringflash adapter, it came to my mind that the same concept could be used also for close focus wide angle photography. Finally the strobe to subject distance can be very short in this case. I really liked the versatility of the Velcro, therefore I decided to use it to fix the fiber optics branches to the port shade. I glued the loop part to the shade and the hook part to the fiber branches. I sacrificed a diffuser of the strobe to attach the branches to the strobe. The inner part of the diffuser was covered by aluminium foil and the external side was painted black:

Here you can see the final set-up. I decided to create only a half-ring and omitted branches from the under part of the port shade. In this way I can avoid potential overexposure from sandy bottom :

A picture taken in the mirror:

And some pictures with the rig (sigma 15mm fisheye on apc-c sony a100):

More picture here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberstrobe/s...57625125058252/

Cheers

Marcell

Fibers go underwater I.

2011-02-27T05:09:00.000-08:00

After lots of struggling I’ve finally finished two DIY projects using fiber optic cables in underwater photography (last summer). It was an old idea mainly inspired by Joris van den Heuvel over at fuzzcraft.com but other inspirations also came from the wetpixel.com community (Alex Mustard’s home made ring flash and the fibresnoot by Phil). I don’t have two small strobes but one and I’ve found Alex’s solution a bit bulky, so I went on the fiber optic route.
My add on to the previous DIY project was that I had used the hook side of Velcro tape to space the fibers.

After putting some glue on it I’ve covered with the “loop” side and pressed overnight under heavy books. I’ve used heat shrink tubes to hold together the strands. These branches have been sewn at the Velcro part to an oblong rubber band providing a support for the whole set-up. (see picture below).

Next thing was to connect the fibers to the strobe. I’ve drilled wholes into a plastic piece (found in the kitchen but in the first version I used a Lego block) and pushed through the fiber bundles and glued them tight. Actually it was quite complicated because I haven’t left enough overhangs for the branches. When the glue has dried and hardened completely I cut and polished the fibers. The whole adapter was fixed on the port by Velcro (sewn on the rubber band) and by a buckle (good Velcro alone is probably fine).

See the “werkphotos” here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberstrobe/s...57624999795069/

I’ve tested recently the adapter in Croatia in the Adriatic sea. I had limited time and I did only 6 dives. The whole rig worked quite well with my sigma 50mm macro (see some pictures below):

More pictures you can see here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberstrobe/s...ith/5064490066/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiberstrobe/s...57625125010858/

I’ve also tested with a 100mm macro but due to the long port to subject distance, the strobe power was just not enough. At f11 and iso200 the pictures were only correctly exposed at the closest distance with bright subjects. In addition I haven’t seen much advantage over using a simple strobe placed above or right above the port. The big advantage of the adapter was that after realizing that the power through the fiber optics is not enough I just simply repositioned my strobe and used as a standard external strobe.

Important links

2011-02-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

Where to find optical fibers:

http://thefiberopticstore.com/

Flexible hoses from Loc-Line:

http://www.modularhose.com/

The beginning: "Light tentacles"

2011-02-15T10:10:00.000-08:00

I created my first fiber optic adapter in 2007 March. It was very clumsy but worked well. The idea was coming from a Hungarian macro photography forum. Here is a picture of the adapter:

I used 0.5 mm diameter optical fibers as I remember around 30 fibers per tentacle. Overall 4 tentacles were channeling the light from the external flash. I used eppendorf tubes at the end as light modifiers:

Attachment of the bundles was a bit complicated but using duck tape and cardboard finally I've created an OK solution:

And some result with the rig:

Positioning of the tentacles were bad. I've used a shrink tube to hold together the fibers and a copper wire to hold the position of the tentacle but it didn't work well. The laboratory test tubes were to small to work as effective diffusers. Nevertheless, it was a good experiment to prove the concept.

First Post (Valentine's day)

2011-02-13T04:12:00.000-08:00

This is my first blog post and it happens to be by chance on Valentine's day. I've decided to post a flower picture taken with the fiberstrobe V3 adapter:

Here you can see the set-up:

Two macro-snoots were aimed to the stigmas, while a diffusor gave a bit of fill. A simple diffused light would give you a quite boring picture. Below you can see the same flowers illuminated with the external flash only: