Make this nifty DIY gel holder for your Godox lights

DIY gel holder inside Godox AD-S85S softbox

I got me some of these new compact & foldable Godox softboxes AD-S60S, AD-S65W, AD-S85S, etc. for my Godox AD300Pros. They work just fine but I wanted to use the magnetic colour gels from my AK-R1 kit with them. So I decided to design my own gel holder compatible with the AD300 Pro.

Equipment

I made a couple of prototypes until I came up with this idea. I printed it from black PETG because it needs to be a little bit flexible! You will also need 4x small wood screws (d2.2 x 4.5mm DIN798). Don’t use stainless steel, they need to be magnetic. You will also need some self-adhesive foam rubber and aluminium foil tape for the interior of the gel holder.

wood screws DIN798 d2.2 x 4.5mm

Bill of materials

Method

Cut small strips of foam rubber and put it into the 3 slots. After that just cover everything with the aluminium foil tape and use a knife to cut out the venting holes for the glass dome – very important!

Add self-adhesive foam rubber into the slots

Important! Cut out the venting holes

Gel holder with cut out venting holes

1. Locate the small hole shown below and insert the gel holder between these two rods (these two are more spaced apart).
2. Twist the gel holder – it needs some force until it looks like in picture 2. Now you can attach the flash to the softbox and align the gel holder with the venting holes in the glass dome.
3. Add the magnetic filter and you’re done.

How to install the gel holder

Godox AD-S60S softbox with teal colour gel filter

How to install the gel holder inside the softbox:

My main idea was to easily use colour gel filters for the foldable Godox mount softboxes but of course, you can use the DIY gel holder also without the softbox and directly with your AK-R1 Kit accessories.

AK-R1 Kit accessories on AD300 Pro

You can download the 3d printing files here and here.

About the author

Daniel Schweinert is a Director of Photography, VFX artist & Tech geek based in Germaringen, Germany. You can see more of his work on his website, Instagram, Vimeo, and Youtube. This article was also published here and shared with permission.