Why are there bits of wood glued to my Vivitar flashgun?And what's with the elastic band? I wanted to fit a DIY reflector to my 285hv, but it kept falling off due the flashhead design. Three slivers of wood, a tube of Araldite Rapid and the area which supports any sort of reflector is increased.
Take a piece of white mount board and cut out your reflector with a pair of scissors, then fold it as per the image here. I have tried sticky tape to attach it to my gun but it soon became messy, hence the elastic-band plus a small blob of BlueTac between the base of my home made bouncer and the rearmost strip of wood reduces any movement.The softening of my flash photos came out so well that I made a much stronger reflector out of a ten litre emulsion paint bucket lid. But, as this over engineered item refuses to fold into my camera bag comfortably I keep it for studio use and I now use a far more flexible portion of white milk carton for on location shoots. A section cut from a four litre Cravendale seems to be a good size and folds neatlyinside my camera bag while still attached to the flashgun.
There is something else glued to my Vivitar flash head, a small block of plastic which is sort of hotshoe shaped. A flash used together with a radio trigger receiver means the flash tube is positioned about 200mm above the stem of a shoot-through brolly - result - poor coverage.The plastic plate fits beautifully into the hotshoe lighting adapter I bought from Hong Kong for £16. When the box arrived it also included a free 450mm diameter shoot-through brolly. Of course with such a small brolly the flash head peeped over the edge once the trigger was attached.
The last image here shows a temporary strip of Velcro holding the brolly stem in close to the flash tube, it was the only way I could use the flexible adapter without a more permanent solution.
Af
ter this experiment I made the flash shoe plate and glued it on to the top of my Vivitar. Now I can use the flexible adapter with its brolly shaft hole and keep the flash head really close so I get full coverage of the brolly, yet still retain the radio trigger function. Must get round to Aralditing hotshoe plates to all my other guns at somepoint.This hotshoe to lighting stand adapter will fit most lighting stands, or a tripod screw thread, or it'll fit onto a piece of 15mm copper pipe bent to form a really short lighting stand, (ideal for illuminating backgrounds). The hole for a brolly shaft, (in pink), is set at a slight angle enabling the flash to reach maximum coverage of the reflective material.
There's also a thumb-turn flexible joint so your flash brolly can be altered to a wide variety of angles. The £14 radio trigger receiver is indicated in blue and the swivel joint of this superb hotshoe flash to lighting stand adapter is indicated in yellow.
