After doing a bit of reading I decided to take a crack at building my own battery pack for my speedlights. This project was loads of fun. I never eBayed so much in my life! I am pretty excited about the final product.

The most informative tutorial I came across has to be the one by Jan Christian. If you are interested in building one of these I recommend you check out his site. Special thanks to Jan Christian for his awesome tutorial.

You can find it here: http://janchristianphoto.com/blog/2010/05/diy-sla-battery-pack-for-speedlites

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Unfortunately, I did not get around to taking pictures of the step by step process. I do know that I will be building more of these so there will be plenty of time for that later. A couple of things that set my little black box apart from others is that have a little LED to let me know when this thing is on and I used velcro to keep the battery in place and added a little padding on the inside to keep the battery from getting loose.

The other thing I am absolutely tickled about is that I think I may have cracked the code on building these little dummy batteries. The most common approach I learned about is cutting some wooden dowels to the size of an AA battery and attaching a piece of wire to a thumb tack for the contacts. Like this, guy's <http://www.flickr.com/photos/9769495@N08/4230094364/>.
Oddly enough, Throughout this entire project this part right here is the part i am most proud of. I think its because of the simplicity to awesomeness ratio. Basically, Here is what I did:
1. Cut the dowels slightly smaller than an AA Battery.
2. Drill a hole just big enough for the wire (I used 14 awg) all the way through the dowel as close to center as possible. However, it is only important for 1 side to be centered.
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3. Cover the dowel in 1/2" shrink tube (who woulda thought?). The tube was cut slightly longer than the dowel to allow it to over lap.
4. Thread the wire through and solder it to the thumb tack.
5. I used a hot glue gun to secure the wire and thumb tack. I think some black automotive goop would have been perfect, but I didn't have any.
6. Finally, I used some hot glue to seal the space around the end with the wire.
As you see in this picture, the thumb tack covers up the remaining bit of dowel and since the other end is sealed with hot glue it really helped to give it less of a "home-made" look.
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As I said earlier, this project was a ton of fun! I am going to build another one soon and I am planning on including a voltmeter to display the battery  level. Although there are many reasons to do this, there are also a few good reasons not to. If you have read this far and you are wondering why the heck anyone would bother doing this, my reasons are simple.
- With these flashes, My recycle time went from 15 seconds to about 8 seconds.
- I am sick of buying AA batteries.
- I can still take this anywhere!
Finally, I did it because I wanted to see if I could. I can and I did.
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*UPDATE* - 27 Nov 2011
I just added a voltmeter to the battery pack. I really like how this turned out! The voltmeter no only looks awesome, it also lets me know how much battery I have left and the rate of the charge.
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Lately, I have been pretty frustrated with the backpack available to photographers. All the versions I have ever seen are basically a simple back pack with a divider in the shape of a camera. To make things worse these backpacks usually cost more than i am willing to pay for them. So, I decided to take a backpack that i already use and I already love and make it just a little bit more useful to me.  Introducing my version of a DIY DSLR Backpack.

This is what I started with. It is a Targus Laptop backpack. The shoulder straps are very comfortable and for a laptop bag it has tons of room for other stuff.
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- I started this project by cutting a piece of cardboard in the shape of the largest compartment of my backpack (I don't have any pics before this part of the project sorry). I used cardboard because it is cheap and it was laying around. At first, I wanted to cover the entire piece of cardboard with gaffers tape. This would have helpd the card board look a little less like cardboard and a little more like part of the back pack. The two problems I encountered with that plan is that gaffers tape is not very sticky and it is also not cheap to get where I live right now. This project would have required a lot of it so I decided not to go with the gaffers tape. Luckily, I found a black grocery shopping bag. This was perfect! I placed the cardboard inside the back and it was nearly a perfect width. All i had to do was cut it so the edges over lapped and then i used hot glue to keep it in place. you can see that the back was a little shorter than my box so i had to cut a piece to cover the top.
- Next, I made some dividers. My desk came with these little pieces of wood to section off the drawers. I needed something sturdy and light and these wood pieces seemed to do the trick. I covered them with duct tape & gaffers tape leaving a slight overlap at the bottom so they would be T-shaped I then used this T-shape to attach a strip of velcro to the bottom of the divider. I then stuck a couple of pieces to the panel I made earlier. I wasn't sure if the sticky backs on the velcro would be enough so i used the hot glue to stick those down too.  i used the velcro because like the cardboard it was laying around. I also wanted to be able to move the dividers if i needed to.
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This is how I put it in my backpack.
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Then, I took this and turned it into...
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...this. I wanted a nice soft place to stick my camera.
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- Later, I took another box and prettied it up with some gaffers tape. I used a few more strips of velcro to keep it all in place.
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Finally, I put everything in it's appropriate place and zipped it all up!
As you can see it can hold quite a few things very comfortably. Here is a list of what is in this compartment only.
- Nikon D90 DSLR with 18-105mm lens
- (2) Lumopro hotshoe flash units
- Nikon SB-600
- SLR Heavy duty Gorrilapod
- Extra battery for D90, Users Manual, Strobe gels, gel holder and a few bongo ties. This bag is awesome!
That's all folks!
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DIY Projects 05/08/2011
 
While learning photography I have come across an interesting way of acquiring new tools to help get great shots. Some tools are very affordable while others can be very expensive. In those cases, i have learned to use the good hands that God gave me and make those tools my self. Do-It-Yourself or DIY, as its commonly referred to, is a very cost effective approach to building anything. I have found that with a little bit of research, some trial and error, and a whole lot of patience a poor guy like me can produce some very expensive looking pictures. I will use this section to post some of the DIY tools that i have built along the way.

-Peace
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