I was thinking to make a grids spot for my flashes, now I just found a tutorial over the internet who uses black straws to make a grids spot. What a grids spot for: “The spot grids take a regular flash and make it behave like a spotlight. They’re made up of a grid of channels for light to pass through and depending on the length and width of those channels they can radically reduce the area light by a flash, while giving the light itself a nice falloff.” A grids spot can be used for lighting the small subjects, emphasizing a part of whole object, or adding hair lights …etc. This tutorial showing the author making a grids with some black drinking straws and cardboard, and demonstrating the effect with his Vivitar 285HV flash.
It looks quite nice and works efficient. The total cost for this conversion takes less than $10. I am going out to check the local dollar store see if I can find something.
A grids spot mounted on the Vivitar 285HV flash
The example of grids spot light
photo credit/ Pinkerton