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This DIY 3D printed adapter lets you use your speedlight softboxes on Bowens mount strobes and LEDs

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For a lot of photographers, when we started dabbling with flash, we used speedlights. And even if we didn’t, we might have bought a small strobe like the Godox AD200 and one of those 60cm square softbox kits with the S1 or S2 bracket. But as we upgrade to larger Bowens mount strobes or LED lights, those softboxes kind of just sit there on the shelf doing nothing.

Well, Farrukh Pitafi has solved that issue by designing a 3D printable adapter that mounts into your light’s Bowens mount socket and provides the ring around the outside to let you use those speedlight softboxes. And he’s made the files available to download so you can make your own.

Product photography lighting: how to make a cheap and lightweight DIY softbox

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Product photography can be really creative and fun. We’ve often seen it related to interesting DIY solutions, such as the “IKEA lamp hack” or my all-time favorite “garbage can hack.” This time, Eric Strebel shares with you a DIY solution for product photography lighting. It’s a cheap and super-lightweight LED softbox. It’s detachable and adjustable, so you can adapt it to any studio setup you use.

How to make a DIY softbox from an old bicycle wheel

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There are plenty of fantastic DIY softbox solutions, but this one is definitely something I haven’t seen before. To make it, you’ll need an old bicycle wheel. It doesn’t only make a great softbox, but it looks really cool, too. So, if that old bicycle is just collecting dust in the garage, maybe it’s time to repurpose it. In this video, Prickly Sauce will show you how.

A Big, Cheap, Solid And Foldable DIY Softbox

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Many people have asked me about the DIY softbox I made a year or so ago — lovingly nicknamed “the ghettobox” — so here it is, finally: The ultimate guide to making your own 30” softbox (that’s about 76cm, you could make it even bigger, though!), that — very important — is solid and portable. Yes, you heard right, you can fold it flat but it’s still solid. Plus: As a bonus you can also hang it from somewhere to save floor space.

The Tasty Ice Cream DIY Softbox Container Pictorial

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When it comes to how to pictorials I guess no one does it better than Maciej Pietuszynski. (If you don’t think so, just check his Tilt-Shift Lens From A Shower Head, How To Instasuqare Your Camera’s View Finder and How To Give An Old Nifty-Fifty A New Life pictorials) This time Maciej shares how Spring cleaning drove him into making an ice cream softbox that doubles as a camera case.

DIY: Small Circular Softboxes

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Photographer and design student Hunter Frerich came up with this really cool DIY for building a small circular soft box. It kinda resembles one of the first projects on DIYP (which is the one that actually pushed me to start the site) but is waaaaay nicer and probably gives way better light. It kinda resembles the Honl Traveller8, but exchanges the high $$ for sewing skills.

How To Build 24 DIY Softboxes

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About three weeks ago, I asked DIYP readers to build a softbox. It was meant for fun and education. To add some zap the good guys at B&H chipped in with a Westcott Apollo Speedlight set and a strobe (Nikon SB700/Canon 430EX II) for the best design.

I literally fell of my chair seeing all the great submissions. The amount of creativity with the build was huge with sizes and materials covering just about any possible element on the face of the planet (including the rare element IKEAtnium). If you ask me quite a few of the bunch would have had a successful design career.

The contest ended up with 70 submission ranging on all the spectrum
of softboxes:

  • The first obvious choice is size, and there are submissions with as small as half a letter paper to monster47″ softboxes.
  • Another critical factor was the materials, while some
    opted for “clothy and airy” using fabrics, tent rods, and umbrella
    skeletons, others opted for strong and sturdy and used corrugated plastic and
    plywood.
  • Mounting ranges from custom metal brackets through friction fit and we even had one yogurt cup mount.

It is very impressive to see how some set out design goals (or briefs in design lingo) and held up pretty well to their intents.

Here we go with 24 DIY Softboxes which display the variety of softboxes you can built at home. There are some great ideas inside for on budget lighting so visit them all. Click each entry banner to see the full tutorial. There were more good design but I tried not to repeat similar designs in the post so each tutorial will have some added value.

The $10 DIY Foamcore Softbox

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In this tutorial I will explain how I built the softbox used to take the image on the left. It is a 40cm X 40cm foamboard softbox that accepts a strobe. Kinda similar in size and effect to the Photoflex LiteDome XS which I use a lot out of the studio.

On the left image this softbox was used as key, see this lighting setup for another use of the softbox as fill.

It is a simple softbox to make and it takes about half an hour if you have mediocre cutting skills.

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