Finished Grid Snoot
It’s time for a bit of DIY again, this time a nice little grid snoot or two.
I have seen a few tutorials out there in web land detailing how to make these, I have taken the best of each and added my own touches to streamline the process considerably. This method is FAST, no messy glued up fingers, and the grid looks really neat. This version is also immune to the problem of straws falling out caused by the straws becoming unstuck from the brittle dried glue.
Why do you need a grid snoot? Well for one thing they can be VERY much shorter than a normal snoot, to give you an idea how well these restrict the light beam I shot my flash through a bundle of 203mm x 4.3mm straws and from about 15′ away (5m) the spot was about 6 or 8 inches across! Another advantage of grids is that no matter what the shape of your flash head, the spot light is circular.
So grids are well worth making, and even buying all the materials except the duck tape (which you should have anyway!) each grid is only going to cost you a few pennies to make – a bargain 
All you will need are some black drinking straws, I went on my favourite bay of E and got a box of 1000 4.3mm X 203mm Black straws for about £5 including delivery which is enough to set up a medium sized grid snoot factory! A quick note about the straws you buy, the larger the diameter of the straw the longer the snoot needs to be to contain the beam, thinner is better in other words.
You will also need:
- Some card, either from a cereal box or nice black card from a craft store
- Clear double sided sticky tape, I got it from B & Q – UK DIY store
- Some black duck tape/ gaffers tape
- A few inches of elastic, or a couple of rubber bands
- Optional – foam rubber sheet
You will need a few measurements of your flash head to start with. To be precise you will need the head with and height, in other words the size of the side with the clear plastic bit where all the light comes out – If you have a number of different flash guns measure the largest as it will then fit all of them, it does not have to be the exact size of the flash head
Then you need to decide how long a grid snoot you want, and here are some approximations of beam angle to straw length to help you decide. If you use straws of a different diameter you can work out the length for a given angle with this formula Length = Straw diameter / TAN(Beam angle X 0.5)
For 4.3mm Straws:
- 10 Degrees – 49mm
- 20 Degrees – 24mm
- 30 Degrees – 16mm
- 40 Degrees – 11mm
For 5mm straws:
- 10 Degrees – 57mm
- 20 Degrees – 28mm
- 30 Degrees – 18mm
- 40 Degrees – 13mm
Now we have all the info needed to begin the construction of your grid, start by cutting out some strips of card the same width as your flash head. Then mark lines across the card which are the chosen grid length apart. You will need to make the strips a multiple of the grid length long, but also less than the length of your straws. The one I am making is 30mm long (see picture), and I have marked 5 lines so the strip is 150mm long leaving me with 53mm of waste from each straw – I have a 1000 of them to dispose of so wastage is not an issue
Marked Card
Next you need to cover the back of the card (NOT the side with your lines marked on it) with double sided sticky tape. For those of you who never watched Blue Peter and never used double sided sticky tape it is a very thin sticky tape with a low tac backing paper, don’t remove the backing paper until you have completely covered the back of the card (for longer grids you don’t need to completely cover the card as long as the straws are fixed at each end of the marked lines). This picture shows what it will look like..
Card With Tape Attached
I know you are desperate to start using the straws, so remove the backing from the tape and start sticking the straws to the card. Start with the first right along the edge of the card and running at right angles to the lines marked on the back, you don’t need to line up the ends of the straws accurately as long as the straws overlap the edges of the card. Continue carefully adding more straws until the whole card is covered, make sure the straws all sit right next to each other with no gaps, the straws will stick like s*%t to a blanket so be careful!
Adding Straws
You should now turn the card with attached straws over and cut off the excess straw hanging over the edges, then cut the card and straws along the lines you made earlier, some of the ends of the straws will get flattened when you cut them so just give them a gentle squeeze to pop the ends open again. This will give you strips of card with straws attached that are all the same length which is the length of grid you want to make. Now you need to break out the double sided tape again, cover the back of the card so you can stack and stick them together. When you stack them, stand them upright on a table so the ends of the straws are all lined up nicely on one side, it doesn’t matter if the straws are a bit out on the back side as you wont see it anyway. See the next pictures..
Card Strips With Straws
Grid Block
Once you have stacked layers until the block is slightly larger than the flash head cover the sides of the block with double sided tape. Then cut a strip of card 40mm wider than the length of the grid block and long enough to wrap all the way round the block. remove the backing from the double sided tape on the block, and carefully stick the card strip round it, make sure to line up the even end of the block grid with the edge of the card strip as you wrap it round.
Covered Grid Block Back
Covered Grid Block Front
You should now have a grid snoot which will be a loose fit over the flash head, it does not need to be a snug fit. To hold the grid snoot on the front of your flash you need to add some elastic (or rubber band) to fit behind the head of the flash, how you do this will vary depending on your particular flash gun, but the following pic should give you an idea, this is to fix it to one of my SB900’s. Hold the elastic in place with thin strips of duck tape so you can easily adjust the positions to get a good fit. The elastic should NOT be tightly stretched - just enough to hold the grid in place otherwise it will slowly push the straws out of the front, this is especially important on shorter grids!
Attach The Elastic
An alternative to using elastic would be to make the grid about 10mm larger than the flash head on all sides and then glue in some foam rubber sheet on the inside of the grid snoot so the foam rubber will grip the flash head. Unfortunately the sheet of foam rubber I had laying around in my radio control spares box has found its way down a hole in the space/ time continuum along with all my ball point pens and 13mm spanners so I was unable to detail this method of fixing – yet.
If you have a stapler laying around it may be a good idea to staple the elastic to the inside of the grid which will look a bit better as well as be more secure Once you have the elastic positioned cover the grid snoot with black duck tape to make it look more betterer than what it does now and you have an easy to fit grid snoot that works exceptionally well and only cost you a few pence and a bit of time.
Finished Grid Snoot
To give you an idea of how well these things control the light compare the following pictures, the first being 2 of the DIY Snoot tubes which is about 250mm long in total, the second being the 30mm grid snoot I made for this tutorial, and the 3rd is a 100mm grid snoot. All three pictures were taken with the flash positioned about 12 feet from the wall. The blue colour in the grids is NOT caused by the grid, I set the white balance to the ambient light which is sort of tungsten(ish) and left the flash unbalanced as I think it enables you to see the falloff easier
Finally, a quick example of grids in use. Although I could have shot this using other methods of light control grids worked very well I think.
Huggy Bear
Huggy was posed on a Nikon lens box in front of my computer LCD with my complex photoshop background shown full screen (hey, I had to find the clouds filter you know!) so I didn’t want the flashes contaminating the background, queue the grids.
Two SB900’s with home made grids camera left & right on manual, left at 1/32 right at 1/128 fired by CLS.
I hope you found this quick tutorial useful, if you have any ideas to improve it, or just wish to make comment then please feel free to do so below.
Tags: DIY, Flash, Photography, Snoot
