The softbox project

In this project I wanted to build a softbox that would be portable and could be stored in a small space. In every step of building this softbox I tried to keep in mind that it would be essential to make the softbox easy to assemble and disassemble.

Heres some pics of the finished softbox.

Assembly

I put together this little gif to show you how easy it is to assemble this softbox. :)

An image taken with this softbox

This is an image I took with this softbox. Thanks for the beautiful model: Tia.

Here is a pic of the light setup the flash in the softbox was set to 1/4 and the flash with the mini umbrella was set to 1/16

Building the softbox

These are the materials I used to build the softbox:

I wanted to make the softbox 80 x 80cm so I cut 4 sticks down to 80cm and 4 to 73cm.

I cut the piece of MDF fiberboard to 12 x 15cm and cut a hole for the flash. I later read somewhere that cutting MDF releases particles that may be carcinogenic. :( I wasn't too happy about using MDF anyway because I would have wanted to use something better but settled for MDF since I happened to have it.

I drilled a hole to each corner of the MDF fiberboard and attached the L-bracket to it. I put a screw with a bolt that fits my light-stand on the L-bracket.

I then screwed a piece of metal belt (I still don't know what the name of this material is in English XD) to each corner of the board.

Next I hot-glued short pieces of the McDonalds straws to the metal belt and wrapped some gaffers tape around it.

I cut an empty yogurt can in half and hot-glued it to the hole in the fiberboard (my Sunpak flash unit fits in it perfectly).

I also bent the metal-belt-mcdonalds-straw-gaffers-tape-thingies so that they point in the right direction.

I cut 3 x 3cm pieces of some leftover wood and drilled 2 holes in each of them in 90 degrees angle. I spray-painted these pieces and the 4 80cm sticks with silver spray-paint because I didn't want the woods natural colour to cause any reflections.

I sew 4 pieces of rubber band so that they each form a small loop. I then hotglued the rubber bands to the 3 x 3cm wood pieces. These wood pieces hold together the sticks on the wide end of the softbox.

I cut 4 triangle shaped pieces of the black fabric and sew them together so that they have small tunnels in the corners for the sticks to go through.

I put some velcro on the flash bracket (fiberboard) and the 80cm sticks to make sure the black fabric stays in place properly.

Finally I cut the white translucent fabric to size, sew the edges of the fabric (as I did to the black fabric as well) and added some velcro to keep the diffuser in its correct place.

Here are all the parts of the softbox. I think they will probably easily fit in a backpack if I let the sticks poke out of the pocket.

I also made a little case for the parts (excluding the flash bracket)

I will certainly make an improved version of this softbox at some point. Thanks for reading! To see the finished softbox. Go back up