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By Todd, September 8, 2008 9:35 pm

Vivitar 285HV
I had a little photo job this past saturday night. The Wife asked me to take pictures at her 30 year high school reunion and, being the husband that I am, I gladly stepped up to the plate. I needed to get some things ready first, though.

I decided to put to use several of the e-bay strobes I’d been collecting, all Vivitar 285hv’s… I’d seen these mentioned in various places as a good choice for off-camera flash, most notably over at the strobist. Since I don’t have any wireless triggers, I needed to work out some type of wired-setup to use these strobes. I did a couple internet searches and found an article by Nathan Kerr over at shuttersnapstudios.com with a mod for adding 3.5mm plugs to the 285′s, effectively bypassing the proprietary Vivitar connector included on the flashes and the need for expensive adapters and cables .

Closer Views…

This mod wasn’t too difficult, but it did involve opening the shoe, drilling a hole and doing some soldering in a tight space. If you’re not comfortable with that, avoid the mod… I chose not to goop up the cable with epoxy where it leaves the shoe. I may pay for that later but I’ll take my chances with my soldering and careful handling. Ideally there would be room for a zip-tie inside the shoe, but it’s just too crowded…

I wasn’t going to need all the strobes at once, but decided to do all of the mods at the same time while I had the tools and parts out and ready… After working through all six of my 285hv’s, I made a few connecting cables with male 3.5mm ends and a four-way Y to join everything together. A few tests with the strobes and my wiring and all was ready.

The Funky Clamp: The screw turns, the clamp misaligns as it tightens…

Next I needed a couple of umbrella/shoe mount multiclamps. I’d seen some on ebay while looking for the 285′s and ordered a couple from some shop. These arrived and I found them to be less than perfect. The way these were designed left much to be desired, the shoe was funky with a clamping mechanism that didn’t clamp straight and didn’t offer a very secure foothold for the strobes.

The Photoflex Multiclamp. So far no problems…

After more research, I opted to purchase a couple more adapters from Adorama by way of Amazon. These were by Photoflex and much nicer: a better build and a far more secure shoe. I won’t hesitate to order more of these later. The others? I’ll chalk that up to the cost of education…

The night of the reunion went well. The affair was at a small restaurant with a lot of atmosphere… a great place for a meal, but awfully tight for setting up light stands. I did my best to wedge the lights in among the aisle and chairs, trying to keep any of my wires out of the way. The only downside was all of the memorabilia. Almost everything was in glass-fronted picture frames and securely mounted on the walls. With the tight space I couldn’t get my umbrella stands up high enough or at enough of an angle to avoid seeing the strobes reflected in all the glass. I decided to just live with that, having been assured by The Wife that my chimping-shots already looked better than those taken by the photographer at the last reunion. Aside from the reflections (I’m still unhappy about that!) the pictures turned out decently and the folks were happy with the results.

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By Todd, February 11, 2008 11:32 am

The Wife and I have been talking about growing some tomatoes for a couple years now. We decided we wanted them in raised beds to make the tending a bit easier on our backs. This past weekend I jumped into the project. For you DIY’ers, here’s how I did it.First I had to prep the area where the raised planting bed was going to go. A few years ago the Wife and I planted hollyhocks in this area. They were pretty but very prolific, soon taking over the spot and every year since they’ve come up volunteer.

I pulled all the old growth out and tossed it onto the compost pile. All ready for the new beds…

I chose to build the beds out of construction common redwood 2″ x 6″ x 8′s. I would have preferred something a bit less refined, but there was no landscape-grade rough redwood lumber to be had at my local home center. Why not pressure-treated lumber? Well, these beds will be used for growing tomatoes at first. There is still a lot of debate about the safety of pressure-treated lumber for human contact and growing food. For me that makes redwood the right choice.

For those of you who’ve never bought or used dimensional lumber before, you need to know something: a 2″ x 6″ is not exactly 2″ x 6″… it’s more like 1 1/2″ x 5 1/2″…

Likewise, these boards were just a bit over eight foot long… I chose to measure two 4 foot pieces from each eight footer and make two cuts accordingly.

For my hardware I chose 3 1/2′ #9 decking screws.

After cutting my sides to length, I cut the 4″ x 4″ corner posts to accommodate the height of four 2″ x 6″s , 21 and 3/4″ tall. I also pre-drilled the holes for the screws in the 2″ x 6″s to avoid the possibility of causing the dried redwood to split. Then I started putting the whole thing together.

Along the way I found a couple clamps came in handy to hold various pieces together during the build. That’s one of our dogs, Jack, in the background…

And here’s the finished box for the raised bed planter.

It would be easy to make this taller or shorter to fit your needs by simply adding or subtracting a layer of 2 x 6′s… or going with different dimensional lumber, like 2 x 8′s… I chose to make my beds 4 foot square, but you could make them whatever size you want by simply changing the length of your lumber. I still have one more box to build and I’m planning on putting a small ledge along the top to sit or lean on when weeding or working ion the beds…