Photography is about capturing light.
Light bounces off your subject, through your lenses, and you freeze it there, so you can show other people your view of the world. Which is beautiful, but it's bloody hard if there's not enough light for your camera to pick up.
After my time-lapse photography a while back, which was a bit dark, and inspired by diyphotography.net, i decided to make a soft box to light my indoors photos better. As i'm a a bit of a Womble I've used reclaimed items, from skips, bins, and things that i couldn't bear to let friends throw away to make one.
Here's how i did it. Hopefully it'll provide you with some inspiration on how to make one for yourself.
Cost: Free to £50, depending on the materials you already have or can find.
Time: 3 hours build, once you have all your materials.
Light bounces off your subject, through your lenses, and you freeze it there, so you can show other people your view of the world. Which is beautiful, but it's bloody hard if there's not enough light for your camera to pick up.
After my time-lapse photography a while back, which was a bit dark, and inspired by diyphotography.net, i decided to make a soft box to light my indoors photos better. As i'm a a bit of a Womble I've used reclaimed items, from skips, bins, and things that i couldn't bear to let friends throw away to make one.
Here's how i did it. Hopefully it'll provide you with some inspiration on how to make one for yourself.
Cost: Free to £50, depending on the materials you already have or can find.
Time: 3 hours build, once you have all your materials.
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Signing UpStep 1: What you will need.
For clarity here are the materials, tools and consumables knolled.
ONLY USE COMPACT FLUORESCENT LAMP BULBS FOR THIS BUILD. The Compact Fluorescent Bulb will not generate enough heat to damage the box, but a halogen or filament buld will get very hot and may cause a fire.
I obtained most of the materials from skips, dumpsters and bins. Keep an eye out as you travel about for bits of wood, electronics and all sorts of useful things. Skips outside building sites or large blocks of flats tend to have particularly good pickings. I have a cupboard of offcuts of various sizes which mean that i can build things for free whenever i get a good idea!
The tools used are all fairly basic and very common. If you do not own them yourself, they can easily be borrowed or bought second hand from sites such as ebay, gumtree or craigslist.
Buy screws from trade suppliers. The packs are a lot bigger and the screws are a lot cheaper. Avoid DIY chains such as B&Q for buying fasteners as they add a huge premium to the price. For the price of 30 screws from B&Q you can buy 200 from a trade supplier such as Screwfix.
ONLY USE COMPACT FLUORESCENT LAMP BULBS FOR THIS BUILD. The Compact Fluorescent Bulb will not generate enough heat to damage the box, but a halogen or filament buld will get very hot and may cause a fire.
I obtained most of the materials from skips, dumpsters and bins. Keep an eye out as you travel about for bits of wood, electronics and all sorts of useful things. Skips outside building sites or large blocks of flats tend to have particularly good pickings. I have a cupboard of offcuts of various sizes which mean that i can build things for free whenever i get a good idea!
The tools used are all fairly basic and very common. If you do not own them yourself, they can easily be borrowed or bought second hand from sites such as ebay, gumtree or craigslist.
Buy screws from trade suppliers. The packs are a lot bigger and the screws are a lot cheaper. Avoid DIY chains such as B&Q for buying fasteners as they add a huge premium to the price. For the price of 30 screws from B&Q you can buy 200 from a trade supplier such as Screwfix.
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amandaghassaei
says:
Oct 2, 2012. 11:26 AMReply
cool, can we see some of the photos you've taken since building this? do you only shoot with one light source?
4
The Engineer As Hero (author)
in reply to Oct 3, 2012. 4:01 AMReplyAt the moment i haven't taken any photos with it, as i only built it five days ago! My plan is to use one light source and use a reflecting board to fill in the light from the other side. I'll mainly be using it for photgraphing instructables from the other side, but i'm very new to using lights in photography. I'll put some photos up once i take some!
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