Take a £7 shower curtain, plus 12 feet of copper tubing and make a 3 foot by 6 foot reflector.My wife sewed a pocket at each end of the curtain from the bathroom department of a DIY warehouse leaving an access point at one end. Into these pockets I slipped two lengths of plumbers 15mm copper tubing with a 'Tee' joint soldered in the centre of each
Cut off a seven foot length of tube and about a foot in from each end bend to almost ninety degrees, 75 degrees is best as ninety allows the joints to come apart during use and too straight an angle makes it difficult to assemble.Use a drill to remove any excess solder from the empty socket of the 'Tee' joint which may prevent easy entry of the main support pipe.
After bending the pipe you'll need to cut the ends back until you can assemble the framework without struggling yet still keeping the material taut.
There are several benefits to bending the pipe, easy assembly, creates a natural spring which keeps material taut, easy dis-assembly, and less of a sharp shadow caused when using as a sun diffuser.
There is very little twist on account of the two bends and the positive way they lock in place whereas the mark one model suffered a lot from twisting in even a light breeze as it had no bends at all.
It's light enough to be held out level from one end with two hands and the addition of a clamp and wing nut makes for easy adjustment.Total costs - about £15. Time to make - a couple of hours one Sunday afternoon. Assembly of the finished DIY reflector takes just twenty seconds and packing it up takes thirty. The very first time it took half a minute to put up and has since worked out at a constant twenty seconds. Rolling up the material and slipping on an elastic band takes a little longer as I try to avoid creasing the shiny material - I've taken longer to find a spare memory card!
okay, so the main pipe is rather long and unwieldy but a small price to pay when similar sized reflectors cost around £150.
A lighting stand makes this a very versatile reflector / diffuser for portrait work under all sorts of difficult lighting conditions.I'm now working on a half sized reflector with a light spraying of golden orange paint on one side as I need a smaller reflector for helping capture golden sunrise portraits similar to those I've seen in magazines, plus I'd like to bounce a flash out of it.
Hmm, a smaller one would probably fit into that 27" toolbag I picked up in Jewsons Building merchants for £14, along with all the other bits and pieces we strobists seem to carry around on photoshoots
Keith (Strobist) Robins
