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Studio DIY – Softboxing The World – A Home Grown Softbox

Jul 7, 2007 by Udi Tirosh 3 Comments

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DIY studio softboxA softbox is a studio thingy that professional photographers use on their studios. Why? for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, softboxes create a smoother light – less hotspots (yea – those are the bright, burnt our noses in your photos), anther is smoother shadows. Most professional models are shot with softboxes to get that glamorous, look. Softboxes are also great for macro shots – they produce even diffused light.

The only trouble starts when you head down the road to the store and want to get one of them nice wonders. They usually cost something like a small county side house. In this article I will demonstrate how to build a homemade studio softbox for just a few $$.

DIY softbox materials
The first step is to get the stuff you need. see the picture on the left. What do I have there? Naturally, I have box – this is just your ordinary box there fox, nothing to see, move along. I also have some aluminum foil (I is not a must, but will produce better results – so I highly recommend not to get lazy with this one). The white thing on the back is a one time table cloth. Where I live, you can get a roll for a few bucks, they have them in white and red. It is semi translucent, and will pass light. You can also use silk, sketching paper, or any other soft material that diffuses light. Lastly, I have scissors and glue – my “working tools” borrowed from my two and a quarter years old daughter. I had to promise to take her picture as payback for those tools.

diy softbox - gluing the aluminum foil
The next step is to start gluing arranging the thing together. The first thing I did is to glue the aluminum foil to the inside of the box. At first I did not take the flaps out of the box, thinking I can later use them to prevent light spill, but eventually I broke and scissored them off. If you know of a way one can use them, please share. Again look at the picture to see what I am talking about. The UHU glue was really nice for this job, but I guess any other glue will do the job.
After all the glue fun, you should end up with box that has pretty reflective interiors.

Next, you cut a hole in the back of the box. I cut a small rectangular hole, which was slightly smaller then my SB-800. This way the flash was held by the friction of the cardboard. see pictures below.

DIY softbox - hole

DIY softbox - hole with SB800

The last step is to glue the table cloth / silk / sketching paper on the open side of the box. You should end up with something like this:

diy softbox - cloth on

What else is left to do? plug your flash at the rear end of the box and start taking pictures. Here is the first picture I took – paying back for the tools

first image with softbox

Quite a drama, isnt it? I had to add a reflector to open up the shades a bit. this is what we got the second time around. For a reflector, I just used a big foam board, balanced by a cushion. The nice thing about reflectors, is that anything white can reflect, even a white wall.

softbox - openned shadows

And here is how the setup looks like, reflector “and all”. Notice the “walk like an Egyptian” pose

softbox with reflector

One of the cool things is that you can experiment with different boxes and sizes to get different effects.

Related articles:

  • Flash mounted softbox
  • Super simple light tent
  • The origami studio

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Related posts:

Default ThumbnailHome Studio Photography: Your Complete Guide To Building A Photography Studio At Home Studio Lighting – Flash Mounted homemade DIY Softbox How To Choose The Right Softbox For The Job: Understanding Softbox Size Vs Soft Light Default ThumbnailGrown Up Babies? Use Their Strollers As Photo Assistants

Filed Under: DIY, Tutorials Tagged With: DIY Photography & Studio, softbox, studio

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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