Hey kids! Did Santa bring you a speedlite for Christmas? Maybe it was a LumoPro or something similar that doesn’t come with its own pouch? Well, don’t let your new flash go unprotected out there. Just swipe some leftover bubblewrap and your trusty roll of two-inch gaffer tape and make your own ghetto-luxe padded pouch!

What you’ll need?

1. 2″ gaffer tape
2. Bubble wrap
3. Your speedlite

 

Cut strips of bubblewrap. You can be a stickler and measure, or just keep your flash handy and eyeball it. You’ll want the front panel to be longer on the bottom (for the bottom of the pouch) and back panel to be longer on the top (for the flap.) Keep the smooth side of the bubblewrap on top since that will be the inside of the pouch. The tricky part is that last bit when you’re taping inside the pouch.

 

I made sure to keep the flash inside the bubblewrap womb to make sure I was never making it too tight. You can test the ingress/egress (sexy!) of the flash as you go along. From there it’s just a matter of taping it up as neatly or as gritty as you want. The beauty of gaffer tape is its “scultpability.” To help around the corners, take a square of gaff and rip it halfway, then make a corner from that. Again, you can be as tidy and exact as you wanna be. I’m from tha streetz, so I like mine a little rough. (Or, I’m just lazy.)

One other tip: If you’re testing your pouch to make sure it’s not too tight, make sure to test inserting the flash both ways as you go along. (Oh, behave!) The flash probably has a chubbier end so it might fit one way, but not the way you want it to.

For the top flap, if you have some adhesive Velcro ™ laying around, great! If not, you can make a strap by folding a piece of gaff in half, tape it on, and just slide the tongue of the flap in that. (Rowr!) Gaffer tape has some friction to it, so this works fine for me. (See first picture on top)

There you have it:  A quick and dirty padded pouch for your speedlite.  It doesn’t feel half bad next to my factory pouches. If you try this, or have better ideas, let me know. And if you dug this, Like us on Facebook!

 

I had a gig shooting my friends blues band in a sports bar in Oceanside. It was a dark corner without a stage and without any existing lighting. This was much different than any concert shooting I had done before, where stage crews set up expensive lights for the band that I can piggyback off of. This was a show with no existing light whatsoever. I had full freedom to use off-camera speedlights if I could find places to put them that didn’t get in the way. I placed a couple strategically and tried using RF-transmitters. (Calumet Litelinks) Big problem! The flashes fired very reliably, but I was unable to focus on anything in the darkness! Shooting active musicians is a focusing challenge in the best of times. This shaped up to be a disaster.

But, I had an idea: I switched to the Canon IR transmitter (ST-E2). Since it was indoors, this worked fairly reliably as well, plus had the huge — HUGE — bonus of having an auto-focus assist beam, which the Canon 5D lacks on its own. As I discovered, this is actually a very big deal. I had a little problem getting the AF-assist beam going, even after I enabled it in the camera settings. I resorted to erasing all camera settings to factory default, and then it worked. That was annoying.

Near the end of the night, I noticed the bass-player had moved off to the side near an alcove with a great backlight. I went over to him and exposed for the backlight, then placed a speedlight to add some fill on him. I chimped it three or four times to get the proper power on the fill, but on the very last shot, he looked up at me and smiled. I nailed one excellent shot. Seconds later, the whole show was over.

Three Lessons Learned for Lighting a Live Music Setup:

One: If you have the opportunity to set a backlight to color the back wall, you damn well should do it. I didn’t think of this until it was too late.

Two: In hindsight I was very intrusive setting up lights. Getting in the band’s face and doing a lot of flashing for shots that weren’t worth it. Had this been a more popular concert, I would have been a very unpopular guy. Since nobody was there, I was OK. I would be more selective if doing this again.

Three: If it’s too dark to focus, hope that IR triggers can work so you can leverage auto-focus on the ST-E2.

This was good experience for me and I’m sure these lessons will serve me well in the future.

Play this now: “Blinded By The Light” – Manfred Mann