While shopping at Ikea recently and buying a box for my shelfs, I found out, that the Ikea Dröna Box (Link Germany / Link US) fits an Apple MacBook Pro 15″ perfectly. That’s when I decided to make some use of it. I thought it might be an good idea, to modify the box a little bit, in order to actually use it outside. I went to my local hardware store and got some additional parts. Here’s what I got and what I paid:
| Ikea Dröna Box | 3,99€ |
| Plywood Board | 3,45€ |
| Manfrotto 014MS | 7,00€ |
| Screws, Bolts, Nuts | 5,20€ |
| Sum: | 19,46€ |
Note: Those are German gross prices. Prices may vary depending on where you are. For me it was also 19% cheaper, as I’m able to deduct the VAT.
The hardware store always cuts my wood to whatever size I need, the Manfroto 014MS is used to mount the final product to a lighting or C-Stand and everything else is used to assemble the whole thing. I drilled a M10 hole in the center of the plywood, hammered in a captive nut. Then I I drilled four M6 holes in the plywood and the box and attached the box to the plywood with four M6 bolts and thumb-nuts to it. I cut a little hole into the left side in order to get power and USB cables trough, then screwed in the Manfrotto 014, covered the sides of the plywood and the hole with some tape and voila: the whole product is finished.
The whole built took me less then 30 minutes. It’s a great, little and cheap DIY tool. It collapses to a really flat area, that’s easy to transport. It’s easy to mount on lighting stands, c-stands or set-carts. Awesome for shooting tethered photos to Lightroom (that’s what I did here for all the photos), for DIT or data-wrangling jobs and also great to hold a directors monitor, as you can basically put in every device you want.
While it’s really effective in bright sunlight, I do miss my old MacBook with the matte screen.
