Filter Holder For Speedlights

In this article, I will show you how to use coloured filters and honeycomb grid on a home-made holder that you can attach to a speedlight to improve your flash photography.

Birds in hand

The idea of having a filter and grid holder had been simmering in my mind for some time. I searched on the internet but found no cheap and useful accessory.

Lying unused, I had five round plastic coloured filters: red, green, blue and yellow. All filters and the grid (honeycomb-pattern) were 11.8 cm or 4.65" in diameter.

Since I already had a professional-level lighting setup in the photography studio, I needed a compact secondary setup for quick and informal indoor shoots.

I was in no mood to buy another light-stand. A spare microphone stand came in handy for conversion to a light stand. It was height-adjustable, had a heavy round base and could be extended up to 178 cm (5'-10").

Over its top end, I screwed a metal adapter to convert the larger diameter male male 3/8" thread to a smaller diameter male 1/4" thread.

On this adapter, I mounted an optical slave unit with an ISO hot-shoe. The use of such slaves has fallen out of favour these days as everyone fancies radio-controlled, battery-dependant, menu-driven and expensive triggers. 

On my poor slave unit's hot-shoe, I mounted a swivel adapter to enable the fixed-head speedlight to be angled in any direction.

No trouble at all

Enthusiasts and hobbyists usually end up falling in love with some or all of the equipment they use.

I took all the trouble for the sake of my vintage Yashica Pro 50-DX that I loved using because apart from having the ability to be powered by three AA batteries, it could also run on 220V A.C.

On modern speedlights, I miss the ability of vintage models to fire either using battery power or 220V A.C. 

Most people do realise now that the manufacturers do not want us to have flexibility and useful options without paying dearly for them

Shoes, hot and cold

The swivel adapter used here had a cold-shoe (without electrical contacts) on top for the speedlight. To get a proper hot-shoe connection (with electrical contacts), the speedlight's male PC sync plug was connected to the swivel adapter's female PC sync terminal.

Finally, I mounted the old speedlight on top.

SoN philosophy

Put simply, I practise making something out of nothing: that is SoN.

Instead of jumping to buy expensive accessories, I always first try to use unused but useful items lying about at home.

Looking around, I found plastic covers of the terminals of four UPS batteries purchased earlier. Two such two covers were glued together in a u-shape and then secured with several zip-ties.

Additional zip ties were used to create a 1 cm wide gap in the middle of this gizmo to facilitate installation and removal of the filters and the grid.

Result

With this filter holder, I can now use two light modifiers simultaneously: a coloured filter and a honeycomb-pattern grid. Are you asking yourself, what is the use?

When any coloured filter (red, green, blue or yellow) is used, a white background can be made to look unique and colourful.

If you use the grid (with or without a coloured filter), you will get a focussed beam (meaning, the light beam will be narrower). By playing around with the distance and angle of the speedlight from the background, you can come up with novel lighting effects.

For portraiture, I can now light up in various colours the background separately from the front KEY light.

My secondary setup's KEY light is another bit of ingenuity. I am using multiple vintage A.C-powered speedlights mounted together inside an umbrella. These I trigger via a DSLR-mounted radio slave unit.

In a future article, I will show you how I made this key light out of vintage gems.

Endnotes

Inflation be damned, to complete this project I spent no money to buy any parts. Everything was already available at home, I was able to do what I wanted and above all, I achieved great satisfaction.

I encourage you to pick up your tools, speedily re-connect your brain with your heart and be a handyman (or a handywoman) DIYer.

QUIZ

Can you guess the brand and model of the wristwatch I have used in the photos? Please leave your answer in the comments section.

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2024

All photos by the author