hi guys,

Made myself a beauty dish/flash ring today. Parts consist of universal Lambency diffuser, light cover (made of white plastic, cost me RM2.50), aluminum foil to cover the diffuser dome and black paint to paint the back of the light cover.

Here are some pics of my DIY Beauty Dish



Here are the results.

Product shot tests with my DIY beauty dish....

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yup, I purposely overexposed them a bit...

Just got myself a Phottix Battery Grip and Octopus Platinum Battery (this battery got 2 yrs warranty)....can't wait to test it back at home...now stuck in the office.

Just got back home with my new Phottix Battery Grip BP-A350 and 3rd party Octopus Platinum battery. Without wasting anytime, I straight away put the Octopus on the Sony charger and it's charging at the moment. I opened up the Phottix packaging which is quite a simple plastic packaging. The VG overal is made from plastic and the hand grip is covered with rubber. The VG itself is quite light without any battery.

It has a few buttons on it which are the shutter release, AEL toggle and EV compensation/zooming while viewing buttons. A control dial is located in front of the shutter release button. The shutter release button doesn't feel that smooth like the shutter release on the camera's body.

Further inspection, I opened the battery chamber cover and slided out the battery pack tray which can accommodate up to 2 batteries. At the back of the battery pack tray, there is an option switch for the batteries (1 and 2). Phottix VG doesn't auto switch when one of the battery runs out the juice. You must manually pull out the battery tray and switch to the next one with the option switch.

I took out the original Sony battery from the camera and slided it into one of the battery compartment labelled 1. Then I slided back the battery tray pack into the chamber and closed it. I then removed the battery cover from the camera's body and attached the VG into it and secure the body's tripod receptacle to the VG mounting screw. Overall the installation is quite an easy task.

In order to make all the buttons on the VG works, there's an ON/OFF switch called grip function lock, which obviously needs to be set to ON. I switch on the camera and put the camera into the vertical position. It feels really nice and comfortable on this position compare without using the VG before. I got this more solid feeling with the VG attached. I tested all the buttons and the command dial and they works fine. Like I said before when pressing the shutter release button it doesn't feels the same like pressing the camera's shutter release button. I also tried shooting in the continuous mode and I got no problem with it.

My conclusion is that I'm really happy with Phottix Battery grip, it's really worth the price I paid, which is half less than the original Sony VG. I think I can live with the manual switching, just slide out the battery tray and slide the battery switch position and slide it back (really a small matter).

Note : Phottix Battery Grip BP-A350 is actually the same with Travor S350 Pro as in the manual it stated Travor not Phottix. Well China is well known woth OEM product so this doesn't surprise me at all.


Pros:
1. Feels very comfortable on vertical postion and better handling.
2. Cheaper than Sony original VG i.e Sony VG-B30AM. (Paid RM300 for the VG and Octopus battery, the VG alone is RM270 and the battery alone is RM80. Got discount if buy both items together).

Cons:
1. Shutter release button doesn't feels like the button on the camera body.
2. Doesn't have an automatic battery switch when one of the battery dies.