HOW TO MAKE A DIY HONEYCOMB STROBE / FLASH / SPEEDLIGHT GRID WITH STRAWS

WHAT ARE HONEYCOMB GRIDS USED FOR

Honeycomb grids are light modifiers that are able to concentrate light into a straight direction, preventing spilling from the edges. I often use grids on studio strobes when it comes to still life photography and dramatic portraitsand I remember I created my first speedlight grid with corrugated cardboard following this tutorial I think in 2006, before buying my current studio gear. This was really rough and naif, but since the principle is always the same, it worked and I enjoyed to make a couple of experiments with it, back in the days.

Then I completely forgot about it until recently where I started shooting more wedding. I always disliked those flashed wedding pictures, with harsh shadows, white foreground and completely black backgrounds (I bet that there is someone who can turn this to art, but it’s not my case ^^) and, since I like documentary style better, I prefer to keep natural light conditions and play with them.

But, as photographers, we have physics limits to cope with, so what to do when you have to shoot dynamic scenes in low light situations?

You mount your speedlight of course. And you start to see ugly things on your camera’s LCD.

That’s where the honeycomb grid comes into play.

WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT YOUR SPEEDLIGHT GRID?

You can find quite a lot tutorials around on how to make a DIY speedlight grid, but when I decided to do mine a couple of years ago, I couldn’t find anything that was enough sleek, stylish, easy to mount and to store, so I asked my boyfriend to help designing one. He took inspiration from this and added a couple of tweaks: no velcro, no rubber bands, no fancy way to attach it to the speedlight.

Our grid just slip onto the flash head and that’s it. I tested it in various situations and it never moved from its place.