yea dude im just going to dl the templet and not cut out the middle.

I gave it a shot.......what the heck, it was cheap enuff....had all the items at the house....It works GREAT , and looks great....pics look very pro.
thanks for the tips, and I'll be sure to pass this web site along to some friends....

I am new to photography so bear with me.

How exactly do you use a soft box? Do you put a light inside of it? Or do you take the picture through it?

I do not understand the transfer of the image from the six A4 pages to the cardboard or MAPAL sheet. I use a laser printer and images do not transfer by going over the lines. Did anybody have a similar problem? More importantly how can this be fixed except trying to redraw the image?

hi, I could not print out whole template, it came out only one sheet every time. Pls help me.

I've also tried to print this and whatever that mdi file is....is not recognized by any program on my computer. MS paint doesn't work either. It printed it but it printed it on 4 pieces of paper instead of six. I'd really like to make this but can't get the template printed.

I finally got this template downloaded and tried to redraw it with my parameters for my OLD OLD OLD SB-16 but it's not quite working the way I'd like it to. Does anyone have any ideas to make this template compatible with the older rectangular shaped flashes? I'm doing a wedding this weekend for the first time and the results from using one of these amazes me so I'd really love to be able to make one for my OLD OLD OLD :-) flash. I have four days 'til the wedding. Think I'm a bit of a procrastinator? :-) Any help would be SOOOOOO greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for anything you can offer.

I just recently purchase a soft box and used it for the first time the other night. I was shooting a play and boy am I impressed with the results. Nice soft light on the actors, sharp and clean.
I'm going to try making the one you have here and I'll let you know how it worked out.

This didn't turn out as well as I hoped. The dimensions didn't match my SB24 (not even close). And printing the pages out never worked: I got two sheets out of the four.

If someone could break the file into tiles (the poster above said he did his in Illustrator: if someone could do that and just save the Preview, that might work) it would help. I ended up just working backward from the dimensions of the SB24 and going from there.

Or you could simply lay out a quarter of the design and we could make four copies and tile them.

I wouldn't recommend Corroplast, as the internal flutes make it hard to manage sharp cuts and crisp folds. Foam core or some kind of thin art board makes more sense. Something a little heavier than poster board sounds about right.

And where do you find fabric stores that let you have silk for free? I paid US$10 for a 12 inch piece (44 inches wide as well). Tracing paper sounds like a good option.

I am a great believer in the wonder that is velcro. The last time I had home-made softboxes around I got sick of the space they took up (had a big one and a little one, after I liked the results of the little one I made). If you buy a roll of velcro you actually make a box that will flatten.

My boxes used foamcore, as one of the contributors above did. Any and all of the joints involved can be velcroed. If you want them to stay together, they stay together. If you want to separate them, you can detach the velcro strips, partially or completely. All velcro was krazy-glued.

I lined the inner joints of the box with 3-4" strips of white bristol board, glued to one side of the joint, but not the other. When you flatten the box two of the joints must fold, but they hold up for quite a while. This took care of light leakage.

AND, if you have a strong enough flash gun, you can throw an extra piece of lightweight fabric or tissue in the box, right in front of the flash and get an even softer diffusion of the light.

Used velcro to hold the box onto the flash. Especially with the big one I always stuck a stand under it anyhow, cuz it was too big and awkward for the flashgun to bear alone. The advantage of attaching the flash head to the box using velcro is that you can make a nice tight fit.

If I wanted to shoot from overhead it was tricky but it could be done. As I recall I ended up krazy-gluing an extra ledge of foamcore around the flashhead end of the softbox. I attached the softbox to the flash, then wrapped a bungie around the whole mess, using that ledge, and hooked it to the stand or boom, to help. I always had an extra stand around, though, to make sure things didn't fall apart on me.

Good old velcro . . .

D

I used this template on a smaller scale, made out of 80gsm white paper. This worked fantastically on my a Cybershot DSC-650. I stuck it down over the built in flash, just missing the lens. Worked brilliantly. Thanks for the tutorial.

Friends, i`ve made this softbox and it`s good!
It works wonderful at 18-40 mm, but when I switch to 55 mm - pictures becomes hightly underexposed.. I think that is because of very wide angle of the softbox=(
What can you recommend to do in this situation?

Thank you for the great article. It certainly gives a lot of ideas.
While one does not necessarily have to follow this exactly, this is one brilliant softbox. My softbox broke just now unfortunately, due to the fact that I misjudged my strength and bent top and bottom too strong.

Personally, I would live sides as wide as top and bottom thus making the box slightly larger and perhaps allowing more space around the front opening.
Additionally, there should be thinner sheets of polypropelene available, which can easily replace the silk used to cover the front in this example.

I am now toying with few ideas for a "mod" of this particular softbox and will try to post the follow up when it is ready.

Awesome.. I was in the market for a softbox, and thought I would give this a try before spending the bucks.. Made 2 tonight. Office depot didn't have Mapal, so I used poster board.. one is plain with the frabric front, the other, I lined the sides with foil (shiny side up) and a fabric front.. which one is better?

Thanks..

You all seem to be experts, and I was wondering if you could give me a few tips on making a DIY Photography Studio. I read the article on it but it didn't help much. I am trying to make on in my room to put portraits of people, and I have had a few requests on products but the portraits are more important.

What is the importance of white paper on the floor [Besides just having the white paper on the wall].
What is the best type of lighting to use, for cheap?

etc etc. Any help would be great! thanks!

I was reqested to shoot a model outdoors in the evening, around her neighborhood. In this scenario, we can not walk around with our ights and extensions cords. having sufficient light to get rid of the shadows om my subject had proven difficult.

Because I dont like to use a flash, we were limited to bouncing the light form nearby street lamps and floodlights from local buildings.

In the areas where the artificial light was sufficient, we prodced decent results. However, it happend to be that the spots I truly wanted to use as a backdrop did not have the light required to be successful.

I would like to know if anyone has applied this portable soft box to a maglite flashlight? Or does anyone have a suggestion for a maglite bounce device available? Other than holding the flashlight in one hand and the bounce in another. I was thinking of mounting my maglite to a bounce umrella?

Thank you,

Frank

After reading through this I am amazed at the cost saving efforts we will all go to in order to get the improvement in our shots that we want. I am fortunate enough that I don't have to go the DIY course for my softbox but I want to pass on my utmost "way to go" to all of you that have taken the time to improve your shots with this basic and low cost addition to your picture arsenal. What would we do without this kind of information being shared.

I've started to take more and more ring shots and sometimes I use flash to add a little kick. This contraption should result in softer light so I can shoot directly and at a lower power than bouncing. Great tip! Thank you!