DIY Light Stand + Homemade Reflectors

I was asked by some of my fellow 365 group members to share a little bit about the homemade light stand I have been using for some of my “ghetto lighting” assignment shots. I have also recently made some reflectors so I could participate in the recent  “ghetto lighting + reflectors” assignment. I hope you find the following documentation of DIY photo gear projects useful. The above mosaic is a compilation of images showing my light stand, reflectors and images produced using my homemade gear.

I was most inspired to make a light stand after reading this tutorial. I had been using my husbands desk lamp but it unfortunately broke during the recent ghetto lighting assignment.  As a homeschooler and crafter, I recycle lots of objects. Our community has a wonderful site at our county’s waste center where you can drop off things that you don’t want or may be broken but are still usable. Anybody can take the items left for free. I have found many things that either just needed to be cleaned or have slight repairs done but are still perfectly usable to me. This saves a lot of things from going to the landfill since our trash is shipped to a nearby state.

I had two tripods waiting for repurposing for this project so all I needed was the light source. When I dropped off our trash and recycling one morning, someone had left behind a tall, black, metal floor lamp which has three lamps hanging off the top portion of the vertical bar. It was taken apart and in three pieces but still looked usable. I tried putting it together after cleaning it up a bit only to find one portion of the vertical lamp post to be stripped which no longer held up the top lamp portion however, the lamps all still worked. I had the tripod I was going to use handy and the metal lamp was almost a perfect fit. I had to thread the metal post into a plastic cap and then secured it with glue. This is great as this enables the stand to be disassembled for transport.

Since this is a vertical floor lamp, there is an electrical cord for the lamp. I wanted to use the tripod because I could thread the cord for the lamp straight down through the tripod. Like a lot of tripods, there was a plastic hook I had to remove from the bottom. After a little bit of time, patience and help from a drill, I succeeded in removing the hook so that the middle of the tripod was an open, hollow tube. To remove the cord from the original lamp base, I had to cut off the plug and rewire the cord after I secured the lamp on the tripod. (My husband was out of town but I have watched him rewire gadgets many times and succeeded on my first attempt. Yay!)

I like the lamp as it serves to hold the light steady and at various adjustable heights. I am still looking for light bulbs with more natural looking light, though, as I am tired of adjusting the white balance during post processing and my cameras WB settings don’t seem to alleviate the problem. A solution to this is to recycle the desk lamp I was using since only its base had broken. I took it apart and it happened to fit right on the top of the light stand. It still has to be rewired to work as it is a bit too complicated for me. These are not exact instructions since I just found materials that fit together for my purpose. I do hope this inspires you to look around and repurpose something to work for your needs.

The base for the lamp is still usable as well. I plan to make a stand with it by adding some PVC to it as a holder for reflectors and backdrops. (still working on my custom design and will post about it when it is finished.)

I was also inspired to make some homemade reflectors recently. This tutorial that I followed is about how to make a reflector for $5. I chose this because it was fast and I already had everything on hand to make them. Here are the reflectors I made in one afternoon (drying time was overnight). I recycled a pizza box for the silver reflector (made with tin-foil) then I recycled a thick, cardboard box for the white reflector (made with 2 layers of white copy/printer paper). I am currently looking around at local discount stores for some kind of gold foil and other interesting reflective materials I can attach to some cardboard.

If you have been inspired to make some of your own, please visit the following links which have a ton of information all about making light stands and reflectors from various household objects.

Happy Shooting Everyone!

Filed under crafts, environment, photography | Comment (0)