Studio B

Is a home made portable photography light kit primarily for Macro (close up) Photography. Its designed to bolt onto the bottom of a standard SLR camera and have two or more adjustable light heads that pack multiple super bright LEDs each.

This first build will have 24 - 11,000 mcd Super Flux LEDs that will run on 3 AAA batteries for a little over an hour. I expect it to add 1-3 stops of light to subjects within 1 foot of the camera lens. However the brighter the ambient light the less effective it will become, but even in those situations it should help fill in shadow details from harsh directional sunlight.

Base Construction:

First thing I had to do was find a flexible medium to hold up the lights, I found a product called loc-line. Initially I ordered it from a photography site, but later I discovered where to get it pretty much directly from the manufacturer,.. http://www.modularhose.com/ It works perfectly as it allows the power cables to run through the tube keeping the build nicely packaged and the wires out of the way. I used there 1/4" loc-line tube as I saw no reason to go with the ticker heavier loc-line.

Next I took my camera and placed it on a piece of high density foam. I first traced out my cameras base, and then I factored in where my hands generally sit while holding the camera. after that I decided on points on the base where the Loc-Line could bolt on without getting in the way of my hands operating the camera. After all that I Cut out the shape I had traced out (image to the right)

The lock-line I originally purchased did not have any way to fasten onto the base. so I rummaged around a hardware store for about an hour and found these lamp bolts, they would allow my power wires to still pass through and give me something to bolt to the base.

After sanding down the inside of two of the loc-line pieces I applied copious amounts of plastic epoxy being careful not to allow any of the epoxy to drip through or mess up the threads on the lamp bolts.

Of course after doing all that I discovered the previously mentioned website where they sell these with threads already attached,.. as these epoxy jobs are a bit iffy ill likely switch these out for ones that where molded with the threads already.

Light Head Assembly:

Next I started on the actual light source. I was not entirely sure what magnitude of light I should shoot for. So I decided to start with what I had on hand figuring I could always add later. I had ordered a handful of  White S-Flux LEDs with an advertised power of ~ 11.000mcd a while back for a different project that never really got off the ground. I had 25, so I figured 12 for each light head. This meant I was going to be producing something in the magnitude of 250,000 mcd, since this number really does not translate into anything I know from the photography world,.. I had to wing it and hope for the best, but it sounded like a nice big number,..

Next I raided my scrap materials drawer and pulled out some expanded PVC, a bit of anti glare acrylic sheet, and some cellular polycarbonate. I cut the PVC and the acrylic sheet to about the same shape making sure I would have enough space to fit the light module inside. I then surrounded the build with a thin cut of the Polycarbonate and ran spacers between the cells. Finally I used clear polycarbonate machine screws to hold it all together. Click both photos for a closer look on how the light heads where made.

After that it was just a simple matter of running the wire through the Loc-Line tube and attaching it to both the base and to the light head. At the base I used the brass lamp bolts, at the light head I drilled a hole large enough to squeeze a piece of the Loc-line into the expanded PVC and then hot glue the pieces together. The hot glue was probably a bad idea, next time ill use epoxy to hold these parts together.

The last part of the light head build was to install a piece of corrective filter right in front of the LEDs. These s-Flux leds had a color temperature of around 6000k and since daylight is around 5500k I needed to adjust the light from these LEDs to be a bit warmer. I wanted to do this at the light source, this way the LEDs would be closer to matching regular daylight and time consuming Photo shop corrections could be avoided. The filter i used, a 81 D, applies a - 300 to the source color temperature, this means my LED lights would now be producing ~ 5700k and if need be later I will add a second layer of the filter to get things down to an even closer/warmer 5400k.

The finished product looked something like this.

Continued: Figuring out the power requirements and building the control circuit ---->