Optical hunting is a great way to get creative images with sharp edges, but you’re limited by the monstrous gobo collection. Here’s how I found out how to make your own for about $11.
I wrote an article on how to use optical snoots here. It’s basically an attachment that goes to the end of your light and passes it through a lens that you can focus on to get a clear or dim light. You can use different attachments called “go-betweens” or “gobos” for short to project certain patterns on your subject. These gobos are priced anywhere $16 arrive $90 Or more. The good news is that a lot of manufacturers use a standard 2.6″ diameter for their gobo, so you can buy a Godox optical viewfinder and use a Westcott gobo in it. The bad news is the master gobo packs. mostly garbage. There’s always one or two instances of a window in each set. Then you just get a random number of samples that you’ll never use. If you have three that you’ll use in a pack of ten, you’re in luck.The bigger problem is when you want a specific model, but the 10 or 15 gobo packs available from different manufacturers don’t have what you need.
I made this eight-minute video to detail the process, but let me break it down for you here and explain some of the things I left out in the video.
The quest to create my own Gobo
I bought really thin pieces of metal to try to carve them in Glowforge, a giant laser engraving and cutting tool I have. It is not strong enough to cut metal, only engrave it. I’ve tried carving them out onto poster board, but the cut edges are simply too rough to get the look I need. Another problem with poster boards is that optical lenses generate a lot of heat. Using a 100 watt lamp, the steel gobo gets very warm after only 10 or 15 minutes of use. So I have to have something that won’t deform or burn under high heat. So I needed something metal, but soft enough to cut with a razor and hard enough to keep its shape. I would also love if it didn’t cost a lot because I have so many shapes that I want to try and know I will have to do a lot of trial and error. That’s when I found the magic of tin cake. I bought a pack of 50 for $11, and their bottoms are perfectly flat circles about 3″ in diameter, so I have plenty of room to cut them just right.
How to cut your own Gobo
Start by cutting off the bottom of the tin. Use an existing gobo as a guide and cut it into the perfect 2.6-inch circle (or whatever diameter you need).
Next, grab a sharpie and draw any design you like. I like to use a sharpener because you can blot out the ink and start over if you want.
Make sure there’s some way to keep the gobo in place that will eat up some space on your plate, so you can’t get to the edges with your shape. On the Godox Optical Snoot, about a quarter of an inch to the ring holds the gobos in place. The Westcott rack seems to take up less space.
I made this mistake when engraving this pentagram design because I had a circle going around the pentacle, but it was covered by the retaining ring. I still like the result though, but I wish I had made it smaller.
For the first few times, I started using a razor blade and a piece of cardboard under it so I wouldn’t touch my desk. It works well. However, I upgraded a few pieces to make things a little easier after trying to cut them a few times.
First, I have a cutting board – not just any cutting board, however, a cutting board with a sticky surface. To be honest, I bought it by mistake, but when I saw it had a sticky surface, I was glad it made it so much easier. The tin is very thin – not quite like aluminum foil, but still very thin. When you make intricate cuts on such thin material, you may accidentally tear it or bend an angle. Cutting it on an adhesive surface will help keep it in place as you make precise cuts on such a lightweight material.
The next thing I got was a circular cutter. You set the diameter and center the cutter and spin it around the rough cut of the bottom of the tin and it forms a perfect 2.6 inch circle. This is just a time saver and it saves me from having to keep applying black ink on my metal gobos.
One thing to keep in mind is the size of the model. Many gobo models are designed to pour a shape onto the model and spill over to the background. For example, you wouldn’t want to project a small window onto a model; you want to project straight lines from windows on the model and have some windows overflow into the background. For this image with the cross, I just wanted it to be projected onto her body or on her face, so I had to move the optical gun a foot away to get the image I wanted. . That is with the standard 85mm lens that comes with kits.
You can bring your gobo to the screen and let the light shine through the screen to see what the texture would look like if you were using really thin lines. For my cobwebs and pentagrams, depending on how deep I am and how smooth I pull the blade out, the lines aren’t quite visible, so I have to run the blade through them. once again.
Here is a gallery of some of my images from this one:
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions. I want to see your creations.
