| DIY Photography Soft Box
I’ve been trying to come up with an affordable soft box to use at the wedding. The problem we’re having is I don’t know if we’ll be allowed much natural lighting – apparently it may not be possible to pull all of the curtains back for some odd reason. Who knows – it’s a country club – either way I want to be prepared, so I’ve designed a prototype of a ‘soft box’ in SketchUp.
For those of you not familiar with a ‘soft box’ – remember those strange umbrella things the photographer used for your high school photos? That is the basic idea behind a soft box – you either bounce a light off another surface – like the metal plated umbrella – or shoot it through a diffused material like cloth. I’m going for the latter of the two – diffusion. Diffusion creates a softer light than directly shining it onto something, which is great for photos.
As you can see in the following photos, I’m planning on an angled wooden frame – most likely covered in a white canvas. The main problem here is I’m not allowed to have anything ‘hideous’ or in the way. It has to appear natural and not show up in any photos if possible, but at the same time I need as much ‘natural’ light as possible for the videographer – and for the photographer(s) so they don’t need a flash.
Again, for those of you not familiar with flash – it washes out any natural light that might be around, or worse make the people look washed out. Of course, you could digital correct it to a point, but I prefer to just not worry about it.
Here’s the bulb I’m planning to use: 105 Watt Compact Fluorescent
It’s a bit long at nearly 12 inches, but that shouldn’t be a problem if I position it back in the housing. You’ll also notice the color of light it produces is 5000K, which is around the same color a typical camera flash produces.
I’m going to install it in a standard ‘incandescent clamp light’ that you can find in the hardware section of any wal-mart. This way you can clip it onto the center board you see inside the bottom section of the light box and move it back/forward to adjust it – and you can also swivel the light any direction you need it to face. Having all of the faces semi-transparent means it will stream out diffused light in all directions.
This may require some rather heavy canvas to keep it from being too visible – so I’m going to test out my idea using a 430W projector lamp I’ve got at the house. Although, I wouldn’t recommend using a halogen on something covered in cloth because it gets SO hot. Fluorescents burn almost cold, so they’re great for this purpose.
I’m going to shoot for a pure white canvas to cover this box with. Otherwise I’m afraid it would change the color of light it produces. Here’s some screenshots of the sketch I’ve done. Keep in mind this isn’t very – to scale. I’ll probably make it about 2 feet wide – across the face of the light assembly – by about a foot deep. I may also change this to a triangle/squared shape or entirely squared – you get the basic idea though.
Posted by falcoln0014 
June 2008
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