DIY: All-in-One Light Grid Diffuser and Cool Background Made from Plastic Bottles

We wouldn’t exactly describe it as ‘elegant,’ but this little DIY project by Instructables user pizzidave is both functional and extremely easy to make. Requiring almost no DIY ‘skill’ of any kind, you can create a cool background and grid diffuser for yourself using some plastic bottles and rubber bands.

There are only three materials you’ll need to create this from start to finish: a bunch of plastic bottles (he used 144), about as many rubber bands, and a halogen lamp or slave flash for when you actually use the final grid.

You’ve probably already guessed the rest of the steps: strap the bottles together in rows and then strap those rows together to form a stable grid using the rubber bands. That’s it. About as easy as a DIY project ever gets.

After that, just set up the grid however/wherever you see fit, and place your slave flash or hot light behind it. You now have a makeshift grid diffuser that doubles as a cool background (shallow depth of field suggested) that we could see coming in handy for some neat product photography.

For a detailed step-by-step — pizzidave describes how he chose to connect the bottles together for stability and offers a few tips — head over to the original Instructable by clicking below.

And, as with all of the DIY project we share on the site, feel free to drop some suggestions for how you would alter/improve this design in the comments down below.

Easy Plastic Light Grid Diffuser/Background [Instructables]