All the recent Cheetah chatter got me thinking about how I might improve the usefulness of the two folding softboxes I own. The boxes produce decent light but the brackets are awful. A weekend project was born.
I decided to cobble together a simple Elinchrom compatible adapter to which the folding softboxes could be mounted. The object was not to be able to use the boxes on Elinchrom lights (not much point to that) but rather to be able to mount them on my Kacey bracket which is configured to accept Elinchrom accessories.
To a spare SP Studio Systems Elinchrom speed ring insert, I attached a 5-7/8" diameter Masonite ring with a 4" hole in its center:
Done. Here's the finished adapter mounted on the Kacey bracket:
And here it is with a 24" folding softbox mounted:
From the front:
The 1/4" thick Masonite mounting ring holds the softbox much more securely than the standard-issue rings that come with these types of boxes and, of course, the Kacey bracket is infinitely more robust and adaptable than the standard brackets as well. The adapter could be improved by replacing the very tall SP Elinchrom ring with something shorter. That would bring the mounted softbox closer to the front of the flash by almost 1/2". However, the SP ring works fine and, at only $10, it doesn't hurt to sacrifice it for this project.
With Cheetah madness sweeping the forum, and with many (several?) Cheetah owners also being Kacey bracket owners, I thought this exercise might be of interest.
Dave F.
