Editing, Childs play

Came across this post yesterday on Peta Pixel.
I bought the app Joystick Mapper mentioned by one of the commenters (NZ$6) and now have a Playstation controller set up to work on my MacBook Pro. 

Specifically to work quickly through edits in Lightroom.
You can pair the PS controller and the Mac using this procedure.
The right joystick now operates the mouse movements, the left joystick operates the mouse scroll wheel (left, right, up and down). The right shoulder buttons are the left and right mouse buttons. Digital Left and Right buttons emulate the Left and Right keyboard buttons. 
Digital up and down buttons increase and decrease the flag status. Triangle button is the 3 key for assigning three stars to selects, and the Circle key decreases the star rating. The R3 button is the return Key...
... But of course you could set up any combination you want.
Here is a screen shot of my settings in Joystick Mapper.

Now I can very quickly run through a days shoot, culling and selecting without having to take my eyes off the screen.
The Playstation controller has been ergonomically designed to be comfortable through extended hours of use and I happened to have one lying around. Actually not lying around so much as getting a pretty heavy workout most evenings.

One word of warning.
Be sure to shut down or deactivate the preset in Joystick Manager before disconnecting the bluetooth PS controller. Other wise weird stuff happens. My cursor tried to hide in the top left of the screen and couldn't be coaxed out of the corner with a magic mouse or Wacom tablet or trackpad or even a pretty please with sugar on top.

3D printed Flash Head holder

I have been traveling with a spring metal framed Easy Soft box EB-60 60x60 and/or Easy Soft box EB-60 40x40 which are great little softboxes for using with Speed Lights but are not that light and are a bit of a pain in the luggage because of their shape and size when packed down.
I found a cheaper umbrella type softbox made by Phottix which is slightly larger at 70 x 70 cm, lighter and packs down to a smaller, long thin package.
Only problem (and there always seems to be a trade off when you go cheap) was that the flash mount placed the head of the Speed Light very close to the top of the inside of the box. Actually touching the box when mounted on a Pocket Wizard FlexTT5.
So I designed and built this flash mount yesterday.
I designed the holder in ViaCad 2D3D and printed it in my Makerbot Thingomatic 3d Printer,
As you can see in the photos it brings the head much closer to the axis of the umbrella. The Nikon SB900 head simply presses into the holder and stays put using friction.
If you want to print your own I have put the stl file on Thingiverse.

Perfect grip solution

I think I have finally nailed the perfect compromise when it comes to a small light weight clamp for strobes. This is something I am happy to have in my travel case. Doesn't take up too much space and is easy to use and pretty versatile.

It is made up of three main items; A Manfrotto Nano clamp, a small
ball head and a plastic cold shoe with a threaded bolt.

Secondary Items are a velcro cinch strap and a small piece of tubing (or Rod).

The ball head is screwed into the 1/4" hole on the top of the Nano clamp as if it were up the wrong way, then the cold shoe is screwed into the base of the ball head after discarding the knurled nut that came with it.

A Nano clamp will open up to 35mm, so it will clamp to a standard inside door, not too bad considering. What I came up with to attach to larger objects is where the cinch strap and tube come into the picture.

I wrap the strap around the object (I can connect two or more if required) loosely enough to fit the tube between the object and the strap with a little slack. Then by clamping around the tube through the strap I attach the rig while tightening the strap by pinching it together. Obviously only works with objects you can get all the way around.

I now have two of these as part of my lighting kit. The Nano clamps are not cheap.  No gain without pain?

Light stand lite.

I have been working on this stand for a while now. Have been using the prototype for a couple of years in the field and was considering commercializing it in some way.
However today on the Strobist blog a very similar design by Swedish Photographer Peter Karlsson with an almost identical simpler version has put paid to the idea of patenting the concept.
So in the interest of sharing and giving back I will put my own design out there for people to copy if they want.
Like Peters stand it uses the light weight tent pole concept of thin tubes held together with bungie cord. Mine has spreaders to separate the legs. The flash is attached to a Kaiser cold shoe flash bracket that rides up and down the stand on a tube over the three legs. This stays in place purely using friction created by the legs being under tension.

So the flash can go from the top down to the first leg joint.
To go lower I just pull out the lowest leg sections and let them lie on the ground.

The prototype uses hobbled together hinges made from various model plane bits and pieces.
One end of the spreader slides up the leg to bring the three legs together then the three leg sections can be pulled apart to break the stand down.
This prototype is made from carbon fibre tubes used in kite construction and will support a flash at almost two metres and weighs just 250 grams.
Collapsed it measures 69 cm.





The next version I intend to make will be a five section leg so that the collapsed stand will fit in my Pelican lighting case.

Power Octopus

One of the main impetus for my inventions is saving weight and volume of the gear I need when traveling to regattas around the world.
At the moment I am traveling with two camera battery chargers, an AA charger and the adapter / charger for my MacBook Pro (Another plus side to running an iPhone was no charger).
This requires several cables and hence requires adapters for the different sockets encountered around the world.
The Apple charger has a very nifty system of inter-changable slide in adapters to easily convert the charger from one socket type to another. This system uses the standard figure 8 style socket in the charger so it will also take any of the small computer / jug style cords supplied with most hardware.


The little octopus (Tritopus?) I have made is three male jug cord ends into one female jug cord socket.
So now all I need to travel with is two or three Apple plugs and the Octopus.

 I couldn't find a socket at any of the electronics or electrical supply stores at home so ended up recycling a socket from an obsolete appliance.
A bit of careful soldering and Voila. The rubber cover over the socket was a lucky find in the local electrical supply store, not entirely sure what it was meant for but it works perfectly here.


On a safety note. If you intend to copy this idea, I take no responsibility for any damage to you, your equipment or you burning down a hotel / home etc.
All the appliances I plug in will take 110/115 or 220/240 volts and draw less than 500mA.