Those of you lucky enough to own the excellent Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash system will be familiar with two things; firstly, that the default reflectors throw the light in a very wide arc and secondly that the Elinchrom made grids are not cheap. So, faced with the dilemma of needing some control of these powerful little lights I pulled on that staple of home made Strobist light modifiers; Black Correx.

Correx (Or Corroplast as it is known in North America) is that corrugated black plastic sheet that is primarily used for sign making. The trickiest thing is tracking it down – I got mine from http://www.mdpsupplies.co.uk, but you’ll have to buy a few sheets at a time. Even so, you can pick up ten 32″x24″ sheets from MD Supplies for £17 +vat when I last checked. That’s more than enough for several grids for your Quadras and several Correx gridded snoots for you speedlights

Once you’ve got hold of your Correx, making the grid is simplicity in itself. All you need is sharp knife, some ducktape and some rubber bands for mounting on the heads. So far I’ve made 1cm deep and 2cm deep grids. I’ve yet to compare these with the actual Elinchrom 30, 20 and 12 degree grids, but have shown some initial test shots below to give you some idea of the control these grids offer (These shots were all taken with the 2cm deep grid).

So, in a bit more detail, armed with your Correx sheet, this is what you need to do;

1. For the standard 13.5cm reflector, you’ll need to cut 40 x 2cm wide strips.
2. Once you’ve cut your strips, stack them side by side.
3. Wrap a loop of Ducktape taughtly around the shortest sides to hold the lot together (I over lapped by about 3cm)
4. Attach to your reflectors with rubber bands as shown in the image below.

As is, these work well. You might get some light spill around the back edge, but I’m thinking of adding some foam to the back, with a hole cut out for the reflector to resolve this.

Here’s a few close ups of the grids in action with an Elinchrom “A” head;

This portfolio shot was also taken with a 2cm Correx Grid. I reckon it did a pretty good job of keeping the light spill off of the jetty

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