Dale's DIY Sandbags

Yet another thing I forgot to blog about!

Dale LOVES a project. And as winter dragged on in January, Dale decided to make his own sand bags. He didn't want to pay the $25-$35 each (click on prices to see the styles he modeled his after) at the camera store for a bag of sand--he just couldn't justify the price. He made a total of 10 and he said they cost him about $6.50 each to make, using the same materials as the commercial equivalents!

He borrowed a bag from our friend Pat and then reverse-engineered the bags to make his own. He's even had photographers on message boards offer to buy the bags (empty, of course)!

The bags started out as a simple piece of fabric, of course.

He had to add handles...

And without sand, it's just an empty bag. He put the sand in plastic bags to reduce leakage.

Finally! A bag with sand in it. Each bag has 15 pounds of sand--perfect to create leverage for his light stands!

Here's a link to his photo gallery, showing step-by-step how he did it. And here's a link to a PDF Dale created to give to other photographers with a do-it-yourself nature!

And here's a picture of two of them in action--against our still bare orange wall!