Today, we are launching our very first photography contest on Sylights!

This launch comes with the release of a new feature allowing you to accurately find what you want in the lighting diagrams gallery, but we'll detail this soon in another post :)

The contest will be running for two weeks, from today (Tuesday 11th October) up to Tuesday 25th. At the end of those two weeks, thanks to DIY Photography and their DIY Lighting Kits, we are going to choose two winners who will each receive a DIY Ring Flash and its bracket.

This DIY Ring Flash is compatible with most speedlights and will provide you with a beautiful light for your next portraits. That's not just me saying, check out what David Hobby thought about it too!

So if you want to win one of the two kits, go ahead and post your best shots on Sylights! There is no limits to the number of photos/diagrams you can post, but you'll have to take care of a thing or two:

• Include this text in your diagrams' description or title: [DIY Ring Flash Contest]
• Of course, we are looking for beautiful photos, so show us the work you're proud of :)
• Make sure your diagrams are clear and complete, easy to understand
• Sylights is about sharing and learning, so be sure to include a description with shooting details and such. The more educational your description is, the better!
• Setup photos are more than welcome in addition to your shots

Also, you obviously need an account to post your photos, as we won't be able to identify owners of "guest diagrams". Check that you're logged in before posting!

We will announce the winners during the first week of November here on the blog and we'll contact them personnally to get the information we need to send the price over.

So that's it! We're now waiting for your lighting diagrams and photos!

Best of luck to all of you,
Sylights Team 

Contributed by Sylights Team

"Lighting diagrams made easy".
This is what you can now read on the home page of Sylights. Just above a thumbnails list of recent and popular lighting diagrams.

Yes, we've put an update online. Yes, you have to check it out!
This is not just about the home page: we've packed a lot of new features and improvement in this one.
Learn more after the jump!

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Contributed by Sylights Team

Yet another update to Sylights.com!
We have received a lot of requests and suggestions since the launch of Sylights. We are trying our best to include them in our own roadmap, and major updates should come soon with many of them!

Today, we are pushing some new features and new diagram objects. It's not a huge update, but it should help taking things to another level. I'll let you judge after the jump :)

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Contributed by Olivier Lance

We have just updated Sylights with some convenient links on the diagram detail pages.
Three links have been added:

• A "permalink" link, to have a quick access to the diagram's page URL
• A "download" link that will start downloading the full size diagram image to your local disk
• A "delete" link if you'd like to delete a diagram you no longer need. This one will of course be displayed on your own diagrams only, and guest diagrams won't show it.

About guest diagrams, some feedbacks showed us it was not obvious for everybody that they would be destroyed after 24 hours of online presence. Guest diagrams are temporary diagrams, intended to let you try Sylights Diagram Editor without creating an account. Their lifetime is short because they won't benefit from features built around diagram edition on Sylights, as they don't really belong to anybody and those features generally need an identified owner to be effective (just like the delete "feature").
To clarify this temporary nature of guest diagrams, we have added a specific message on their pages, indicating how much time is left before they are destroyed.

Below are two screenshots: the first one shows a guest diagrams that will be delete in 19 hours. The permalink and download link are located below the diagram image; the second screenshot shows one of my diagrams, which then have a "delete" link.

Contributed by Sylights Team

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Contributed by Olivier Lance