IKEA – A strobist’s best friend… part 2

Back for more… In the last section I listed some items from Ikea that I found to be very useful. In this post I will be covering a few more finds.

Gobos/Snoots/Decoration

What you see in the above photo is nothing more then some thin spongy place mats. The thing that I found useful about them is that thin spongy part. At around $1.50 each they can be used in a number of ways and because they are so thin you can carry a stack of them around. My inital though was to wrap them around the flash and use a rubber band to create a on-the-fly snoot. After playing with them for a bit I also figured that they would work for a small gobo as well. I aslo liked the idea of using it as part of the macro studio. The circular design is subtle and if used as a base to set something on could make a nice image.

Backdrop

Sorry for including my washing machine in the photo but I took the photo in a bit of a hurry. Anyway…. What you see is curtain type thing. Its 24″ wide and 118″ long. I imagined this being used in conjunction with the tension cable (see previous post) to produce a backdrop. I am sure with some finesse and proper set up it could also be used as a light diffuser or even a cookie. It cost $10 and was the cheapist one they had. There were some other designs as well but they were all $15 – $20.

Ringflash

Ok… what we have here is the result of weeks worth of contemplation and some really good timing. I had my mind set on making a ring flash but I kept going back and forth on the design. I decided to use this idea from a fellow strobist which involved plumbing parts. When I found it hard to get the parts I ended up putting the plan for the flash on hold for a bit. Soon after that we made the trip to Ikea and I found exactly what I was looking for… the light fixture in the photos above. I bought the fixture for $15 bucks and figured that I would come up with some idea of how to transform it into a ring flash. As luck would have it… when I checked the strobist blog later that day I found the post about the 2 ring flash designs  that Tanya Shields and David X. Tejada had made. I ended up using David’s idea for the bulk of my creation…. but with a few minor changes. Of coarse I used the light fixture in place of the work light housing  but the other main difference is that I used the lid from the plastic container (mentioned in the previous post) for the diffuser. Its fairly thick and sturdy but was pretty easy to cut and attach to the light. Since it would be redundant to post instructions on how to make this light I am going to give you this handy dandy link to David X. Tejada’s post instead. I do have more photos of the light and usage of it on my flickr page. Please feel free to browse at will.