Wet Ones Bare Bulb Strobe Modifier

One evening I went to a restaurant with my friends. I had my Nikon D70 and an SB-26 flash with me. Yes, this old stuff, but it is reliable and good for all kinds of smart lighting. The Strobist web site has a lot to say about the D70 sensor and older Nikon flashes.I keep this combo in my car all the time as a go-around of gear. BTW, SB-26 works very well with the digital camera in the Auto mode.

Front

I wanted to make a few pictures bouncing light off the celling. But, alas, the celling was 15 feet high and not white! The flash did not do a good job filling all that space with enough light and on top of that the bounced light had wired color cast to it! I was hard pressed to come up with a solution. Somehow it dawned on me that in the car I had a tube of Wet Ones antibacterial wipe and the size of the tube is very close to the size of the flash head on the SB-26. I took off the lid and plastic wrapping with printed stuff on it, mounted the tube on the flash head, and voila – I have a bare bulb strobe modifier! It is about 10 inches long and produces light similar to a bare bulb flush head.

Later on I added a couple of adhesive aluminum foil strips on the internal side of the modifier.

Inside

The foil sends more light forward and to the right. It still leaves enough diffused light to bounce around. The foil on the left of the internal part of the diffuser gives some sense of directionality to light because it is emitting more light to the right. Here is a coconut monkey shoot with the diffuser mounted on an SB-28 from about 15″ away.

Coconut Monkey

This picture shows you the modifier mounted on a SB-28 head. It can also mount on Nikon SB-800 and Nikon SB-900 strobes. I also used it on a Canon 580 EX.