Last week I was in Vegas doing some “grip and grin” type photos for a knife show and I noticed a  photog from a Japanese knife magazine using just a single speedlight off camera and a disc diffuser to shoot knives. I decided to set one up on the table at home and give it a shot. But….I wanted to do an even cheaper setup for the blog here using some common household items, so I set up a trash bag diffuser, a single light (430ex II), and some reflectors made out of tin foil to bounce some light back in on the knife handle. (scroll down to see the setup).

It was done at ISO 200, f9, 1/30 with the flash set at manual and 1/2 power. I normally would choose a faster shutter speed but I wanted to show that if flash is your only light source, you could shoot this hand held and still have sharpness and detail.

I think I found a new cheap way to make photos of ebay items and quicky product shots. I’ll definitely be throwing some foil and a couple white trash bags into my camera bag. Its cheap, easy to improvise with and takes up very little space. The trash bags can always double as a rain cover for my gear.

So there you have it. I mounted my light to the chandelier using a Manfrotto “Justin Clamp” which is a really cool toy. The trash bag serves to turn a small directional light source into a big soft one. You do need a way to get your flash off the camera and trigger it. I prefer Pocket Wizards, but there are lots and lots of cheap radio triggers out there nowadays, including the 8-channel ones sold at the Backdrop Outlet.

Some household diffusers/reflectors you may find interesting:

-white trash bags
-foil
-shower curtain
-white bed sheet
-makeup mirror
-tracing paper
- and of course don’t forget to bounce your flash off of white walls or celings for that nice soft “window light” look.

I promise you’ll like these better than the straight flashed “deer in the headlights” look!