Today I'm gonna teach you guys
how to make a homemade softbox.
Like that one!
See that big white thing right there?
Yeah, like that.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
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♪
Hello, Legion! I'm Gerald Undone,
and today I'm gonna show you how to make a homemade softbox.
I made the big one that I'm using to light
this video right now a couple months ago,
and it's been pretty great
and I've been pretty happy with it,
so I'm gonna make a second one,
because it's more handy to have two,
and I figured I would make a video
out of showing you guys how I made the first one.
So here we go, so the first step is,
we need to construct a box,
the container for the softbox.
If you guys have no idea what a softbox--
I don’t really know how you would have found this video,
because you probably would’ve searched for “softbox”-
but anyway, if you don't know what a softbox is,
it's a box that you have lights inside of,
and then it's usually diffused so that
rather than having a light bulb shining straight on you,
which makes a really harsh, shadowy look,
you spread the light out over a larger surface,
which makes a more diffused, nicely-lit,
even, softer kind of light, which is much more appealing
and much more easy to work with than harsh,
shadowy, spotlight-y kind of things.
So we're gonna make one!
So the first thing I've got is this foam board.
It’s just thin...
dollar store foam board.
I don't know. This says “Readi-Board.”
Anyway, it's black, which is nice for the outside look,
and also so that you don't get a lot of leeched light,
because if you made it out of a white material,
it’s possible that your box would glow,
so that you would light areas
you're probably not trying to light.
[marker scraping softly]
OK, so I measured out a piece
that's the full width of the foam board,
which is 20 inches.
20x20 softboxes are common.
And then the end piece is 10 inches wide,
so I just went 5 inches in from each side,
making a 10-inch space in the middle,
and then I just used another piece of foam board
as a straightedge to draw lines from the point.
So this is gonna be our basic shape,
and this is what our panels are gonna be made out of.
So now we just cut it out.
[foam board crunching]
OK, so once we have one panel cut out,
it's a lot easier, because then
we can just trace it onto the other ones.
[marker scraping softly]
[foam board crunching]
OK, so once you have your four pieces cut,
we're ready to move on to the next step.
Don't worry so much about the fit and finish of them,
because we'll be using tape or a type of adhesive
to hold it together.
I use Gorilla Tape, and it’s black,
so it kind of seals in the edges
and makes it look more finished anyway,
so these cosmetic imperfections will be touched up.
OK, so now we just need to cut our base plate,
which is gonna be 10x10 on the inside.
So I'm sure you can see how it's gonna go now,
but it's gonna be like this, right? OK.
OK, so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna affix
some aluminum foil to the panels so that
you don't lose a bunch of your light’s power
because the black will absorb it.
You want to reflect and magnify that light
and blast it all out through the diffused material.
[foil crinkling]
So for this purpose, you're gonna want to make sure that
the shiny side is...
...pointing out...
...the most reflective side.
So if you flip it over like this...
...then you can just cut away the excess.
Then you can use a little bit of Scotch Tape
to hold it in place.
So there, we have a nice, reflective board.
So we're gonna do this to all four.
This is an opportunity as well to make it look
a little bit better, so if you have a side
that has some imperfections on it,
or has a label on it, those would be the sides
that you would want to cover up with the tin foil.
OK, so now we have our four panels covered in tin foil.
Now we need to deal with the back plate.
So in order to put a light inside of the softbox,
there's lots of different ways that you can go about it.
What I like to do is, there are these heads
that you can buy for light stands,
and they kind of look something like this.
This one isn't a store-bought head, though.
But they look something like this.
There’s a socket on there, usually a switch and a cord,
and then some kind of ball-and-socket
or tilt head for adjusting the light.
I made this one by taking a lamp socket
and bolting it onto an old-fashioned light stand head,
so I still get the tilt options,
but I also get the control
that would come with a lamp socket.
So this didn't cost me very much,
but if you do buy this part,
there's quite a few places you can get them
for where they're, like, $10,
and they have a 5/8" socket hole in them,
which is nice, ‘cause they can go on a light stand
or a mic stand and then
they'll have the socket right in there.
But basically, what we need to do is,
we need to make it so that this hole
can go through our base,
so that the panel will be like this. OK?
So we're gonna center it, obviously.
[marker scraping softly]
There's gotta be nicer ways to do this.
I'm just doing it with a knife.
I just want it to be just big enough,
but not too big,
I want it to still be kinda tight.
And then maybe you can kind of force it
the rest of the way in.
So there, once you have it like that,
you've got your plate here.
So now I have this thing,
which you're able to get at Home Depot.
It basically turns a single socket into two sockets,
which is handy for this
because we're just gonna be using household bulbs,
and so if you want to get enough power
out of your softbox,
it helps to have more than one bulb.
So we're gonna screw that in,
which is going to...
help hold it in place.
And then I've got my Gorilla Tape here,
which is basically just really heavy-duty black tape.
You can get this at Home Depot or Walmart.
And I'm just going to tape the bloody hell out of it.
Another reason why I like using the tape
is that it protects the socket,
the threaded parts of this socket adapter,
from the aluminum foil making contact with it.
It's not a big concern
for a few reasons, but...
...something to consider.
It's also this joint that's gonna hold
the majority of the weight,
so you want to feel pretty confident in how strong it is.
So once you've got it taped into oblivion,
then you can apply some aluminum foil
to this panel as well.
[foil crinkling]
The reason why you want to use Scotch Tape is
because it doesn't block
the reflective nature of the tin foil.
[foil crinkling softly]
When you're finished, it should look something like this.
OK, so now we need to attach everything.
So we're gonna go back to the Gorilla Tape.
So we're gonna put a piece along here,
and then flip it over, place the back on it...
...and then just make a bit of a hinge with that,
and that should give us enough strength
to be able to secure the rest of them.
OK, so now that we got it mostly taped up,
we can still tape more afterwards for... cosmetics,
if we wanna tape up some of the tin foil,
cover that up, but as far as function goes,
we have ourselves a box!
OK, so what I have here are two Philips 14-Watt LEDs,
which equates to about a 100W of a conventional bulb,
but they're high-efficiency because they're LEDs.
And the temperature of them is 5500K,
I think, so it's in the “daylight” range,
maybe just a hair warmer from the 6500K blue daylight.
These are a little bit warmer than that,
but they make a pretty white light,
and they’re nice, and I found that
the Philips brand don't make a lot of noise in my opinion,
and have been pretty good for reliability.
So we're gonna screw ‘em in...
...and we're just gonna test it out to make sure that--
before we go any further, that they're actually working.
Prepared to be blinded!
...Ah! Geez.
So, it works!
OK, so now what we need to do is
we need to diffuse the light,
which is what I was talking about the purpose of a softbox.
So there's lots of materials that you can do this with.
People use bed sheets, tissue paper, a T-shirt,
you can buy a diffusion panel if you really want.
But since this is sort of a homemade,
stuff-you-can-find-around DIY build,
I have something that's not exactly homemade,
but you can get it at fabric shops
and that kind of thing, this is a backdrop material.
It's sort of a sheer white material.
It's plastic.
It feels similar to what a photo umbrella
would be made out of,
and it's for a white backdrop.
So I have it doubled up, two layers thick,
and we're gonna affix it to the softbox.
Now, all I'm gonna do for this,
I'm just gonna put a couple pieces of Gorilla Tape on it,
that way if we need to get in at the bulbs,
we can just take off those couple pieces,
because all you really need is for it to be somewhat
tightly held to the box, but that's it.
You don't need it to be glued on all the way around.
OK, so there we go.
We got our diffusion material taped onto the...
softbox like that, and now all we need to do is
we need to put it on a stand.
So now stands are a little bit harder to do
a DIY thing with, obviously.
I mean, you could affix it to some kind of
PVC pipe contraption, or maybe a broom pole,
but I went out and found what I thought
was the cheapest option for a light stand.
Now, you can get light stands online for relatively--
They're gonna cost you a little bit of money,
but you can get ‘em for, you know, $20 to $30.
I can't speak to the quality.
The cheapest thing I could find for having
the versatility, though, isn't a light stand at all,
but instead a microphone stand.
I found that microphone stands,
like light stands, come in a range of prices,
but came in... slightly cheaper
than light stands overall.
And just like for light stands,
the diameter of the mic stand head attachment is 5/8",
which is the same width
as a common spigot for light stand heads.
So we're gonna put the...
...softbox on, and there we go.
Now our head is attached to the mic stand,
and we can...
extend it.
And mic stands have a cool feature,
which is a boom arm, so that you can...
...you know, boom out like that,
which to get that in a light stand
is gonna cost you a lot more.
This mic stand was on sale at my local music store
for about $30, and it's a pretty decent one.
It’s not top of the line or whatever,
but it'll get the job done
because this doesn't weigh that much,
and it’s not like we have a super expensive microphone
on there that we're worried about, so.
OK, guys, I think I'm gonna end here.
I think I covered everything
that I can think of to cover with
making one of these softbox things.
I've been using these improvised ones
for months now, and I'm really happy with them.
I've looked around online for prices,
and they range anywhere from $79, $149,
$399 for different softboxes and different things.
All-in, you know,
for just the box itself,
it probably cost me...
I don’t know, $5, $6?
Throw in the light bulbs,
which I got a pack of two for, like, $7.
Then the socket adapter thing...
probably $20 for everything...
to power up and ready to go, and then maybe $25
if you buy a store-bought head thing.
And then with the stand, like I said, I spent $30.
So this whole set here is $55 for me.
You could probably do better-- these prices are in Canadian,
by the way-- you could probably do better than this
if you find things at certain sales,
certain discounts, or if you order online.
So... in my opinion, it's a better buy,
it's more versatile, and you could do more with it,
or you can spend $150, $200, $250,
on a store bought one, it's up to you.
But there's a lot to learn
from making them yourself anyway,
it helps you better understand diffusion,
the type of lights you want,
the colour temperature, you know, sizing,
what you're gonna do, how you’re gonna diffuse the panel.
You learn a lot when you do DIY projects like this,
which is why I usually
encourage them for other people, but anyway,
that's all I really have to say about that, I think.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you enjoyed this video, please leave a like,
it means a lot.
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I don't do exclusively DIY content,
I do mostly a lot of humour and comedy stuff.
But every once in a while,
I like to throw in a DIY video for stuff
that I've been doing in order to shoot my comedy videos,
the different struggles that I've gone through,
I like to make DIY videos about them.
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I’d appreciate it.
And to the rest of the Legion, as always,
thank you so much for watching, and I will see you tomorrow.
Alright... I'm done.
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