I’ve always wanted a softbox, but I am also tight, so It was either buying a cheap one, or in true Strobist style, making one. Lastolite make foldable softboxes for hot-shoe flashes, so I took a quick look at those. They come in two flavors, 15×15″ and 24×24″. The smaller of the two is £83.50…
Right, DIY it is.
First, some design considerations;
- Needs to be portable
- Needs to look half good
- Ideally be able to fit both my Nikon Flashes
- Collapsible/Foldable and quick to set up
- Cheap
With the above in mind, that ruled out ones made from cardboard and tin foil or foam core. Yes, these work pretty well, and for the most part are hard to tell what they are made from, but they ain’t exactly portable or transportable. Another quick Google bought up a design some dude had made using a food umbrella for keeping flies off. This seemed to be along the right kind of tracks, although he doesn’t say now big it is, or how to attach to a stand. Anyhoo, I went out to my local Stuff shop and bought the biggest square food umbrella they had, then went over to my local fabric suppliers. There I found some material that had a spooky similarity to the stuff used in my silver reflective umbrella, so I bought a meter of it, as well as meter of black and white suit lining, one for the backing, the other as the diffuser on the front.
Construction was pretty easy, opened the umbrella and traced out 4 panels in the silver stuff, pinned then sewed them together to get the correct shape. Removed the netting and cut off the 4 plastic things that attached the netting to the umbrella frame, and sewed them on to the silver stuff. Did exactly the same for the black material, then sewed the two umbrella shaped bits together and thats that. Somehow I forgot to allow a hole for the flash, so had to kind of bodge that. Ah well. Cut out a square in the white material, then Velcroed that to the outside of the softbox. My sewings a bit shoddy, but on the whole it turned out ok, did get a seam backwards though…
Attaching the thing to the flash/light stand was the next step. I wanted it to be attached to the light stand directly, not attached to the flash, so got around that by removing the central plastic thing that erects the umbrella, and replaced that with a M5 bolt. I then made a speed-ring type affair out of a plastic chopping board. To attach to the light stand I sourced an adjustable joist bracket from B&Q, so its adjustable for different flashes. Thats about it really, the pics explain more…
Costs;
Umbrella – £1.99
Material & thread- £10.20 (ish)
Chopping board – £3.00
Velcro – £1.50
Adjustable bracket – £2.00 (probably was a bit cheaper, I lost the receipt )
M5 bolt & nut – 17p
Total cost; £18.86, quite a lot cheaper than the Lastolite, For the record mine is 18×18″…
I now have plans to make more things… stay tuned 
More pics…
